With or against the river? Tracing changes and relationships between social and ecological systems on the central Vistula floodplain over the last 200 years

Studying the relationship between humans and their environment is crucial for observing escalating human pressure. This article examines how two distinct rural communities, living side-by-side, coped with environmental crises during the 19th and 20th centuries. Our case study is Kazuń, a 19th-century settlement inhabited by Catholics and Protestants separated only by a lake, an old Vistula riverbed. Our analysis utilizes written archives (including cartographic materials), but also, thanks to environmental archives (including palynological analysis), we strive to connect landscape evolution with precise demographic data. Our research reveals a continuous picture of environmental change in the central Vistula River valley over the last 200 years.