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The present paper reviews selected outcomes of the FLORIST project devoted to flood risk in the region of the northern foothills of the Tatra Mountains in Poland and summarizes novel results. The project encompassed theoretical, field, and modeling work. It was focused around observation-based hydroclimatology; projections for the future; dendrogeomorphology; as well as influence of transport of large wood on fluvial processes. The project improved understanding and interpreting changes in high-flow frequency and magnitude as well as changes in flood risk in the region, related to the presence of large wood in mountain streams. A unique database on past episodes of intense precipitation and flooding was created, harnessing multiple sources. The project showed that the analysis of tree rings and wood logs can offer useful information, complementing and considerably enriching the knowledge of river floods in the region of northern foothills of the Tatra Mountains. Retrospective and scenario-defined modeling of selected past fluvial events in the region was also performed. ; This paper reports on results of the Polish-Swiss research project FLORIST (Flood risk on the northern foothills of the Tatra Mountains), financed by a grant (PSPB no. 153/2010) from the Swiss Government through the Swiss Contribution to the enlarged European Union. The FLORIST project was carried out from July 2011 to September 2016. The project consortium consisted of the co-ordinator—the Institute for Agricultural and Forest Environment of the Polish Academy of Sciences (Poznań, Poland), as well as the project partner institutions: the University of Berne (Berne, Switzerland), and the University of Silesia (Katowice and Sosnowiec, Poland).

FCL and AS were supported by the Swedish Research Council (Vetenskapsrådet, grant no. 2018-01272). FCL conducted the work with this article as a Pro Futura Scientia XIII Fellow funded by the Swedish Collegium for Advanced Study through Riksbankens Jubileumsfond. WT was supported by the German Research Foundation (DFG, TE 613/3-1). AD received funding from the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme (grant agreement no. 677152). AH was supported by Riksbankens Jubileumsfond (grant no. IN20-0026). MD-D was funded by the Dutch Research Council (Nederlandse organisatie voor Wetenschappelijk Onderzoek, grant no. 016.Veni.195.502). TK, MR, and UB were supported the SustES project – "Adaptation strategies for sustainable ecosystem services and food security under adverse environmental conditions" (CZ.02.1.01/0.0/0.0/16_019/0000797). LS was supported by Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG, German Research Foundation) under Germany's Excellence Strategy – EXC 2150 ROOTS – 390870439. FL was supported by a European Research Council (ERC) Synergy Grant (4-OCEANS; grant agreement no. 951649) under the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme. ; Although variations in building activity are a useful indicator of societal well-being and demographic development, historical datasets for larger regions and longer periods are still rare. Here, we present 54,045 annually precise dendrochronological felling dates from historical construction timber from across most of Europe between 1250 and 1699 CE to infer variations in building activity. We use geostatistical techniques to compare spatiotemporal dynamics in past European building activity against independent demographic, economic, social and climatic data. We show that the felling dates capture major geographical patterns of demographic trends, especially in regions with dense data coverage. A particularly strong negative association is found between grain prices and the number of felling dates. In addition, a significant positive association is found between the number of felling dates and mining activity. These strong associations, with well-known macro-economic indicators from pre-industrial Europe, corroborate the use of felling dates as an independent source for exploring large-scale fluctuations of societal well-being and demographic development. Three prominent examples are the building boom in the Hanseatic League region of northeastern Germany during the 13th century, the onset of the Late Medieval Crisis in much of Europe c. 1300, and the cessation of building activity in large parts of central Europe during armed conflicts such as the Thirty Years' War (1618–1648 CE). Despite new insights gained from our European-wide felling date inventory, further studies are needed to investigate changes in construction activity of high versus low status buildings, and of urban versus rural buildings, and to compare those results with a variety of historical documentary sources and natural proxy archives. ; Publisher PDF ; Peer reviewed