Seed bank of salt-affected soils are important sources for plant regeneration, as this way plants can bridge the unfavourable environmental conditions (e.g. climatic extremities, drought) and seeds can germinate when optimal conditions occur. Our former studies on the seed bank composition of alkaline grasslands confirmed this theory (
Valkó et al. 2014). Salt-affected habitats harbour the world records of seed bank density: in a North-American salt marsh, for instance,
Ungar (1991) found as many as 1 million seeds of
Spergularia salina in one sqaure meter.
It is an interesting question, how do the harsh environmental conditions of alkaline soils affect the density and species composition of the soil seed bank. Therefore our aim is to test the effects of in-situ measured soil parameters (water content, salinity, compactness) on the vegetation and seed bank in alkali grasslands. Our project is funded by the
NKFI KH 126476 grant.
As the first step of our project, yesterday we started the field season of 2019 with seed bank sampling in alkali steppes. Actually drilling on alkaline soils was a rather difficult task, as the soil of these grasslands is very compact. Below you can see some pics about the early spring vegetation in alkaline grasslands and some moments about the sampling.
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| Segmentation and packing of the soil samples. |
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| In-situ measurement of soil salinity. |
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| Typical idillic landscape in Hortobágy: mosaic vegetation structure, traditional sweep-well and flocks of geese. |
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| At sunset we finished our first sampling day. |
And finally, some videos showing the difficulty of seed bank sampling in alkaline soils, and the creativity of our friends :)
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