New paper about cattle grazing

Our paper about the effects of traditional and crossbred beef cattle grazing on the conservation values of alkaline grasslands and marshes has recently been accepted in Applied Vegetation Science. Please click here to download the pdf.

Kovácsné Koncz, N., Béri, B., Deák, B., Kelemen, A., Tóth, K., Kiss, R., Radócz, Sz., Miglécz, T., Tóthmérész, B., Valkó, O. (2019): Meat production and maintaining biodiversity: Grazing by traditional and crossbred beef cattle breeds in marshes and grasslands. Applied Vegetation Science doi: 10.1111/avsc.12475 [IF2018: 3.568]

Hungarian grey cattle is a robust traditional breed that maintains the highest naturalness values in alkaline habitats.

Sustainable rangeland utilization considering traditions and economic reasons is compulsory for harmonising the needs of the agricultural and nature conservation sectors. For proper rangeland management it is crucial to compare the grazing effects of traditional breeds and crossbred animals of the same species that might have different effect on the rangelands. To fill this knowledge gap, in a grazing experiment we investigated the effect of cattle breeds on the vegetation to test the effects on nature conservation value and agricultural production value. We hypothesized that the effects of cattle grazing on habitat conservation values and forage quality depend on the grazing breed, because breeds differ in selectivity, body size and trampling effect. We recorded the percentage cover of vascular plants in three consecutive years in a total of 60 plots in 12 areas grazed by traditional (Hungarian Grey cattle, 0.61 AU/ha) and large-sized crossbred beef cattle (Charolais × limousine, 0.68 AU/ha) in marshes and alkaline wet grasslands in Hortobágy National Park, Hungary.

We found that the effect of cattle breed on the habitat conservation values and forage quality are dependent on the habitat type. The traditional breed maintained a significantly higher species number and Shannon diversity in the marshes than the crossbred beef cattle. Grazing of crossbred cattle led to decreasing moisture indicator values in marsh habitats. Our findings revealed that traditional breeds should be prioritized in the management of wet alkaline grasslands and marshes. Crossbred beef cattle might be a substitute but only in case when traditional breeds are not available for the management of alkaline wet grasslands. In marshes, however, we recommend to prioritize the traditional breeds as they maintain higher diversity compared to the crossbred beef cattle.

Alkaline grasslands and marshes of the Hortobágy National Park form one of the largest continuous open landscapes in Europe.

New paper on the Eurasian Kurgan Database

We have published an 'introduction paper' about the Eurasian Kurgan Database in the Steppe Bulletin. 

The citation of the paper: 

Bragina, Tatyana M. ; Lisetskii, Fedor N. ; Buryak, Zhanna A. ; Bede, Ádám ; Apostolova, Iva ; Tóth, Csaba Albert ; Báthori, Ferenc ; Bán, Miklós ; Deák, Balázs (2019): Евразийская база данных о курганах поможет сохранить биоразнообразие степей /Eurasian database on kurgans will help to preserve biodiversity of steppes/. Степной Бюллетень /Steppe Bulletin/ 53: 36-40. 

The paper can be downloaded here. 

Eurasian steppes have an essential role in conserving biodiversity, but due to the huge habitat loss in the past centuries they are often preserved only in small refuges. Among such refuges are the ancient steppic burial mounds (the so called ‘kurgans’) which have a high cultural and historical importance and are also essential sites of nature conservation. Despite their high number (approximately half million) and conservational importance there is a huge lack of knowledge on the locality and conservational state of the kurgans in most regions of Eurasia. To fill this knowledge gap, we built a public database which allows to record and query basic information on their cultural values and factors (such as land cover type, threatening factors, cover of woody species) that might serve as a basis for their effective conservation. The database provides a transparent, public and easy-to-use source for conservation managers and landscape planners focused on grassland conservation. In addition, it also provides background information for other associate disciplines and public agencies dealing with the protection of cultural heritage. 

Meadow steppe with the statue of a Cumanian lady (половецкая баба). Drawing of Марианны Масловой.

Currently the database contains 2,540 data on Eurasian kurgans ranging from Hungary to Mongolia providing data on their location. Some of the data is provided on the basic dataform, which means we have only the coordinates of the kurgan. But from more than 1,700 kurgans we have detailed data on the land use, threatening factors and cultural values of the kurgans.

Current geographical coverage of the Eurasian Kurgan Database.

All future cooperation partners interested in the building of the database are welcome. Please contact me on the debalazs@gmail.com email address. 

In order to draw attention on the present conservation status of the kurgans across Eurasia we aim to publish a synthesis paper using the data from the database. The planned publication aims to give a comprehensive overview on the current land cover, threatening factors present on and the cultural values associated to the kurgans of the different regions of a wide geographical range. According to the terms and conditions of the Eurasian Kurgan Database data contributors who provided a significant contribution (1, more than 5% of the available data on the complex dataform, or 2, providing valuable data from a new region on the complex dataform) to the Database will be offered a coauthorship in the forthcoming publications. 

You can see our previous publication on this topic here.

Kurgans in transformed landscapes - Paper in Biological Conservation

Our paper about the role of kurgans in preserving grassland biodiversity outside protected areas has been published in Biological Conservation (link to the online article).

Deák, B., Valkó, O., Nagy D. D., Török, P., Torma, A., Lőrinczi, G., Kelemen, A., Nagy, A., Bede, Á., Mizser, Sz., Csathó, A.I., Tóthmérész, B. Habitat islands outside nature reserves – threatened biodiversity hotspots of grassland specialist plant and arthropod species. Biological Conservation (in press)

In transformed landscapes, many populations of grassland specialist plant and animal species live outside the few protected areas and are often preserved on 'small natural features' (SNFs) such as road verges, field margins and rocky outcrops. In the steppe and forest steppe zones of Eurasia ancient burial mounds (kurgans) are widespread SNFs providing refuge for grassland species. Based on a large-scale botanical and zoological survey of 138 kurgans in Hungary, we compared the management regimes, the presence of threatening factors and the conservation potential of kurgans embedded in non-protected transformed landscapes and in protected areas. We found that kurgans extend the borders of the protected areas by maintaining populations of grassland specialist plants and arthropods (ants, orthopterans, true bugs and rove beetles) even in transformed landscapes. We revealed that the lack of proper management, the presence of anthropogenic disturbances and encroachment of woody species are the most considerable threats to the long-term maintenance of biodiversity on kurgans located outside the protected areas. For their effective conservation a new approach is needed, which can cope with the small area and dispersed localities of the kurgans and can integrate them into the network of other SNFs on a landscape-level. As the ecological importance of kurgans is disproportionate to their size conservation actions focusing on their protection offers a greater rate of return of the efforts than can be expected in case of larger continuous sites.

Map of the surveyed 138 kurgans in Hungary. Notations: blue triangles – kurgans outside the protected areas (n =78), green circles– kurgans inside the protected areas (n = 60). Picture on the top – Két-halom kurgan embedded in intensive agricultural fields; on the bottom – Sáros-ér-halom kurgan surrounded by grasslands.

Call for contributions to the new EDGG-edited Special Feature in Hacquetia

6th EDGG Special Feature in Hacquetia 2021: Fauna, flora, vegetation and conservation of Palaearctic natural and semi-natural grasslands

The submission of manuscripts for the EDGG-edited Special Feature in Hacquetia 2021 is open. We welcome manuscripts about natural and semi-natural grasslands, on all taxa and from any region in the Palaearctic realm (Europe; West, Central and North Asia; North Africa).

Hacquetia is the international journal of the Biological Branch of the Slovenian Academy of Sciences. It appears in two issues per year, both in print and online. Through offering longer articles, open access publication and free reproduction of colour figures, it is a very attractive publication venue. Currently it is indexed in the Scopus and BIOSIS literature databases, and it is likely to be included in the Web of Science in the near future.

This Special Issue will be the 6th EDGG-edited Special Issue in Hacquetia, following the five successful issues in 2014/1, 2015/1, 2016/2, 2018/1 and 2019/2. This Special Issue will appear as the first issue of 2021, to be published approximately in January 2021, with about 150–250 pages reserved for our articles. It will also contain a report on the EDGG activities of the previous year.

Procedure and deadlines: The deadline for full-text submission is 15 January 2020 and manuscripts will undergo the normal peer-review process. If you are interested in contributing a manuscript for this comprehensive Special Issue, then please contact me and submit your manuscript to me.

Author guidelines can be found at the journal homepage.

Guest Editor Team:

Orsolya Valkó (Hungary, Chair of the Guest Editors)
Stephen Venn (Finland)
Sabina Burrascano (Italy)
Salza Palpurina (Bulgaria)
Rocco Labadessa (Italy)
Atushi Ushimaru (Japan)

Contact for questions and submission of manuscripts:

Orsolya Valkó (valkoorsi@gmail.com)

Successful DSc defense

I have successfully defended my Doctor of Science dissertation on 18th September.

The title of the DSc dissertation is  Deák, B. (2019): The role of habitat heterogeneity, landscape configuration and land use in maintaining the habitat patterns and species composition of grassland communities.

The dissertation, the thesis, the reviews and the answers to the reviewers can be downloaded from the following link: http://real-d.mtak.hu/1142/

I would like to say thanks to everybody who contributed to the researches and publications which served as a basis for the dissertation.

GfÖ in Münster - The 49th Conference of the Ecological Society of Germany, Austria and Switzerland

This year the GfÖ conference was organised by Norbert Hölzel, Christoph Scherber & Julia Tiede in Münster. This was a really interesting and lively event, with 40 thematic sessions and more than 500 oral and poster presentations. The main topic of the conference was the link between the science of ecology and the practice of nature conservation, the motto of the conference was 'Science meets practice'. They organized a practitioners day with a lot of interesting applied topics, and there where also several interesting sessions where we could listen to presentations about new concepts and theories in ecology.

We presented our talks in the thematic session on Conservation and Restoration, the title of our talks were:

Deák, B., Valkó, O., Nagy D. D., Török, P., Torma, A., Lőrinczi, G., Kelemen, A., Nagy, A., Bede, Á., Mizser, Sz., Csathó, A.I., Tóthmérész, B.: Kurgans as refuges for grassland species: large-scale multi-taxon study on Eurasian burial mounds.

Valkó, O., Tóthmérész, B., Miglécz, T., Lukács, K., Kiss, R., Kelemen, A., Godó, L., Deák, B.: Environmental heterogeneity is a major driver of community assembly – Lessons from the restoration of landscape scars.

The Harbour in Münster is a very nice place.

The city of Münster has a large area of urban green spaces. The largest one is the park next to the Aasee lake.

In the park next to the Aasee there are several biodiverse tallgrass meadows. Information tables explain the value of tallgrass meadows in maintaining biodiversity. This is a great initiation to have some nature in the city!

Biodiverse tallgrass meadow and a shortgrass lawn in the park next to the Aasee.

FIRELinks – European cooperation for understanding fire

Fire has been part of the Earth System for the last 400 million years and humans are the sole species that controls and manages fire. We have used fire for over a million years, both, as hunter-gatherers to manage the landscape, and as farmers to maintain land productivity. Fire has undoubtedly been the most influential element in the development of human societies. Nevertheless, fire has always been a natural hazard, with socioeconomic changes and more recently climate change exasperating its frequency and impact.

The accumulated dry biomass can burn easily.

Wildfires are a common occurrence every summer and the risk of devastating fires does not only affect the southern EU countries. Fire also affects Alpine, Temperate, Boreal and Tundra ecosystems, with particularly notable 2010 fires around Moscow, which led to many smoke-related deaths, the 2014 fires in Sweden, their largest in recorded history, and even the unprecedented forest fires currently burning for over a month in the Arctic Circle. In Hungary, large wildfires are scarce, but small-scale fires occur almost every day in the spring and summer fire seasons. Due to expected further intensification and geographical spreading of wildfire regimes under Global Change there is an urgent societal need to connect research initiatives across Europe and boost scientists research, career and innovation in the field of fire.

Burning cork oak forest in Sicily.

In this context, the FIRElinks COST Action will develop the EU-spanning network of scientists and practitioners involved in forest fire research and land management and connect communities from different scientific and geographic backgrounds, allowing the discussion of different experiences and the emergence of new approaches to fire research. The main aim of FIRElinks is to power synergistic collaborations between European research groups and stakeholders with the objective to synthesise the existing knowledge and expertise, and to define a concerted research agenda which promotes an integrated approach to create fire-resilient landscapes, taking into account science, perception and policy constraints and opportunities.

COST (European Cooperation in Science and Technology) is a funding agency for research and innovation networks. COST creates spaces where scientists are in the driving seat (bottom-up) and ideas can grow through a flexible and open approach. By enabling researchers from academia, industry and the public and private sector to work together in open networks that transcend borders, COST helps to advance science, stimulates knowledge sharing and pools resources.

Orsolya Valkó (MTA-DE Lendület Seed Ecology Research Group) and Miklós Kertész (HAS Centre for Ecological Research) participates in the FIRElinks COST Action from Hungary. FIRElinks will have its First General Assembly & 2nd MC meeting in Sofia on the 8th and 9th of October 2019 where Action Chair Artemi Cerdà and Action Vice Chair Stefan Doerr will introduce Action Members to the FIRElinks mission and current research and developments in the field will be discussed. FIRElinks will be implemented for a period of four years and results will contribute to a better understanding of fire occurrence, dynamics and prevention, as well as its effects on the ecosystem and the society.

Resprouting vegetation in a recently burned wetland.