Our expedition to Kazakhstan in 2016: A little bit of nostalgia

In our former post we wrote about our recent paper published in Journal of Arid Environments about Steppe Marmots as ecosystem engineers (Valkó et al. 2020).

Now we would like to share some of our best memories about our expedition to Kazakhstan, in 2016, which was one of our best journeys ever. We had great adventures there, and also four papers published so far from the expedition material. :)

Four years have passed fast since this great expedition, so now it is time to have a little bit of nostalgia. Especially because in our papers, in the Materials and Methods section, we can give only a very official and formal statement, like this:

"The study area was located in the Turgai Plateau, in the Naurzum State National Nature Reserve, Northern Kazakhstan."

But such a sentence cannot describe what an enormous amount of planning, organization, driving, travelling, coffee consumption :) and adventures it took only to reach these study areas.

Driving from Hungary to Kazakhstan, the way was very long...

After quickly passing Ukraine, we could (or better: had to) have a rest in the Ukrainian-Russian border for twelve hours, so we could sit, play cards...

Or rest in the narrow shadow of the van :) It would have been much more comfortable if we had water with us. But we ran out of it after ten hours.

During the approximately 4000-km-long journey, our main fuel was coffee.

But with such a fresh driver, everything was fine :)

On the way we had short stops, for example in the beautiful forests in the Ural mountains.

Aconitum sp. in the Ural mountains.

The forests there had a luxurious and species-rich herb layer.

We passed several important historical places, such as Kursk.

And Tambov, home to beautiful architecture.

We witnessed some interesting scenes, such as this horse rider swimmig with his horse.

When we entered Kazakhstan, we sow first the endless (ten thousands of hectares) line fields.

And Demoiselle Crane (Grus virgo) showed up just after the border crossing.

With the continuous travel, packing in the car became more and more difficult :)

Especially when some of us wanted to carry these elk-antlers. This picture shows the emotional moment when András said goodbye to the antlers.

In some places, the highways were not of the best quality.

Thus, the dirt road in the steppe parallel to the highway was much more functional.

This was one of our favourite accommodation, near Aktobe. It was a wonderful steppe where Pikas were whistling all the time.

First, we arrived in Kostanay, where we met our fantastic Hosts.

Prof. Tatyana Bragina, who showed us the best places and had a great knowledge of all the habitats and species. Thank you Tatyana for everything!

We made many releves in the sandy forest steppes of the Naurzum Nature Reserve. Here the forest component contains birch, aspen or pine, while the grassland component is sandy steppe.

The forest component of the forest steppe.

And the grassland component, which is very similar to the habitats in Central-Hungary :)

We can confirm: around noon, it is much more comfortable to stay in the forest component.

Naurzum landscape.

Searching the study sites.

Giant Plantain (Plantago maxima) a species that reaches its westernmost range in Hungary, where it is extremely rare. In Kazakhstan, we have seen it many times.

A beautiful onion species (Allium pallasii), that grew typically in the forest-grassland ecotone.

We also made releves in the zonal forest steppe, a few hundred kilometers to the north.

We visited spectacular sodic lakes.

Zonation in the lakeshore.

Elk footprints in the sodic lake.

Nitraria schoeberi, a typical shrub in the lakeshores.

Salicornia sp.

We studied the vegetation of the Steppe Marmot burrows in the Stipa lessingiana-dominated feathergrass steppes (but we have already written about it a lot in the previous post).

Neverending road on the Turgai plateau.

Horses in Karamendi.

Gorgeous landforms in Tersek.

Anabasis-hedgehogs.

The most spectacular landforms.

And other very interesting landforms: kurgans (ancient burial mounds).

This was the largest mound we have seen.

Survey of kurgans - captured in a misleadingly dynamic picture.

Kurgans near Rudny - they are small but still have unique vegetation.

Finally, some gastronomic specialties: camel kumis.

Which was very good, but very difficult to taste as it exploded immediately after opening the bottle (of course the explosion occurred inside the car).

Very tasty lamb with rice, which was more than appetizing after many days of living on canned food and dried fish :)

Our usual lunch break: canned food in the steppe.

On the long way back to Hungary, this was one of our favourite places: the forehills of the Ural mountains.

Finally, our favourite group photo. From the left to the right: Csaba Tölgyesi, András Kelemen, Balázs Deák, Orsolya Valkó, Róbert Gallé and Zoltán Bátori.

Last but not least, here is the list of the papers which have been published as a result of our expedition:

Bátori, Z., Erdős, L., Kelemen, A., Deák, B., Valkó, O., Gallé, R., Bragina, T. M., Kiss, P.J., Kröel-Dulay, G., Tölgyesi, C. (2018): Diversity patterns in sandy forest-steppes – a comparative study from the western and central Palaearctic. Biodiversity and Conservation 27: 1011-1030. PDF

Deák, B., Tölgyesi, Cs., Kelemen, A., Bátori, Z., Gallé, R., Bragina, T.M., Abil, Y.A., Valkó, O. (2017): The effects of micro-habitats and grazing intensity on the vegetation of burial mounds in the Kazakh steppes. Plant Ecology and Diversity 10: 509-520.  PDF

Tölgyesi, C., Valkó, O., Deák, B., Kelemen, A., Bragina, T. M., Gallé, R., Erdős, L., Bátori, Z. (2018): Tree–herb co-existence and community assembly in natural forest-steppe transitions. Plant Ecology and Diversity 11 (4): 465-477. PDF

Valkó, O., Tölgyesi, C., Kelemen, A., Bátori, Z., Gallé, R., Rádai, Z., Bragina, T.M., Bragin, Y. A., Deák, B. (2020): Steppe Marmot (Marmota bobak) as ecosystem engineer in arid steppes. Journal of Arid Environments (in press) PDF