The article tackles the issue of the identification of relics and type of transformations in the rural cultural landscape of Warmia and Masuria, which took place as a result of the depopulation of localities due to the course and consequences of World War II. The incorporation of the southern part of East Prussia into Poland in 1945 initiated a number of social, economic, and cultural changes. Above all, the region was affected by huge migratory movements. These started with the hurried escape of the local civilian population fleeing from the Red Army that conquered the area in the winter of 1944–1945. Subsequently, the displacement of the German people and the unstable political situation that made it difficult to maintain habitation contributed to the depopulation of hundreds of villages, manor houses, foresters’ lodges, and small settlements. Today, in Poland’s incorporated part of former East Prussia, there are about 788 abandoned localities. The extent to which the rural landscape has changed as a result of the total depopulation of hundreds of settlement units has not yet been determined. The purpose of the research was to diagnose the processes that occurred in the material structure of the landscape of Warmia and Masuria after the continuity of habitation had been interrupted, based on data collected due to on-site prospections, searches, and spatial analyses. The elaboration presents possibilities for identifying transformations that occur after depopulation on the basis of the results of multifaceted spatial analyses carried out with the use of GIS tools. Particularly noteworthy is the use of detailed elevation data obtained from airborne laser scanning, which data largely condition not only identification of surface relics but also the degree of degradation of rural structures. The issues concerning the diagnosis of transformations are discussed using, as an example, the study of one of the depopulated localities – Bartki – a former settlement that lies in Olecko County (Warmia-Masuria Province).

Reintroduction of the European beaver (Castor fiber) in the Beskid Niski started in the 1980s. The increase in the beaver population coincided with the systemic, social and economic changes that took place both in the Beskid Niski and in the entire Poland. In the case of the Magurski National Park, they are part of a longer series of events of the twentieth century, related to intensive warfare and population exchange in this area. As a result, the structure of land use, as an effect of human impact on the natural environment, has undergone significant changes. The article attempts to assess the impact of changes in land cover on the European beaver population in Magura National Park. Particular attention was paid to the changes that take place in the immediate vicinity of the beaver sites. The intensity of land cover transformations within its impact zone was compared with changes that occur in other areas of the park, including those made by humans. The results of field surveys carried out in 1996, 2010 and 2021 were used in the research. Until 2019, information was obtained through segmentation and classification of orthophotos. The Mask R-CNN deep learning model and machine learning algorithms were used to extract information from cartographic materials. In the Magurski National Park area, from the 1980s to the present, there has been an increase in the number of beavers; the forest area and the density of buildings also increased, with a simultaneous decrease in the field and grassland area, as well as the density of the road network. During this period, beavers living in the study area showed a tendency to abandon their positions at the bottom of large river valleys near human habitations, in favour of inhabiting higher-lying areas, more distant from human activity zones. Currently, beavers inhabit the areas of abandoned Lemko villages and adjacent forests in the south of the national park. It is difficult to determine and requires further research whether the described change in the location of the beaver habitat results from the beaver’s desire to avoid humans or from other environmental conditions.

The purpose of the study was to determine the dendroclimatic regions in Poland, based on the analysis of the similarity of the annual growth rhythm of trees of 19 European larch populations, which is the reaction of trees to the pressure of the climatic factor. Treering widths were taken as a measure of this reaction. For each population (site), a mean treering chronology was created that covered the period 1957–2016. Its values were converted into incremental indices. Then, 19 indexed chronologies were included in the principal component analysis (PCA) to identify their common features and group them. As a result, three dendroclimatic regions were distinguished, which coincide with the area of lowlands (Pojezierze Południowobałtyckie and Niziny Środkowopolskie), uplands (Wyżyna Krakowsko- -Częstochowska and Wyżyna Małopolska) and mountain areas (the Sudetes and the Western Carpathians). To identify climatic elements that had a significant impact on the size of the radial growth of larch in the dendroclimatic regions, the values of the main components (PC1, PC2, PC3) were correlated with the climatic parameters. Analogously, these analyzes were performed for three regional chronologies which were created by averaging the site indexed chronologies for a given region (group). The size of radial increments of all larch populations was found to be positively affected by low temperature and high rainfall in September in the year preceding growth, as well as high temperature in March and May and high rainfall in July in the year of ring formation. In turn, the high temperature in November of the previous year had a positive effect on the growth of larches growing in the lowlands and uplands and had a negative effect on the growth of larches in the mountains. High temperature and low rainfall in June had a positive effect on the growth of larches from the mountains, compared to those from the lowlands and uplands. Low temperature and high rainfall in October in the previous year and high rainfall in May in the year of ring deposition had a positive effect on the growth of larches in the uplands.