Homage to kurgans - A conference celebrating the past 30 years of kurgan research and protection in Hungary

A very inspiring and successful conference entitled "Protecting the kurgans '30" was organised by the Government Office of Békés County, the Hungarian University of Agriculture and Life Sciences and the Körös-Maros National Park Directorate in Békéscsaba on 21 November 2024. The occasion of the event was that 30 years ago, in the same place, a professional conference on the protection of the kurgans was held, which drew the attention of nature conservation to these special landmarks. The 1994 event was a milestone in the conservation of the mounds, so the organisers of the conference, in celebrating this fine anniversary, have created an opportunity to look back in 2024 on the achievements, successes and experiences of the past 30 years of kurgan research and protection in Hungary. Kurgans are ancient millennia-old burial mounds characteristic of the Eurasian steppe and forest steppe zone, that have outstanding historical, cultural, and nature conservational importance. For more information on these special landmarks, please read our earlier blog posts (e.g. here, here, and here) and scientific publications.

News about the conference in 1994 on the pages of Békés County Days (Békés Megyei Nap) magazine.

It was so nice to hear the thoughts and the presentations of the speakers. It was good to see and hear that the conservation of kurgans is on the right track in Hungary, and that the natural condition of the mounds has generally improved in recent decades, thanks to the joined efforts of conservationists, government, farmers, and researchers. The contributions and presentations highlighted the most important achievements and experiences of 30 years of kurgan conservation and research in Hungary. It was a great honour for us that our research group was represented at the conference with two presentations:

Ádám Bede: The main results of the landscape archaeological survey of the kurgans in the Maros-Körös river basin

Balázs Deák, Orsolya Valkó: Natural values of mounds in agricultural landscapes

In addition to the lectures, visitors were also able to view Ádám Bede's exhibition about kurgans.

Ádám Bede talking about the landscape archaeological importance of kurgans.

Balázs Deák talking about the importance of kurgans in nature conservation.

Many thanks to the Organizers, especially Dr. Attila Rákóczi, Director General of the Békés County Government Office for making this inspiring event possible! We hope that there will be many more such events in the future, where professionals who love and know the Hungarian kurgans can meet and present the values of the mounds and the importance of their protection to the public. It is very important that as many people as possible learn about the historical heritage and the conservation importance of these millennia-old mounds, because as Dr. András Rácz, State Secretary emphasized at the conference, "No one will protect what he is not interested in, and no one will be interested in what he has never experienced." (David Attenborough) 

The iconic Gödény-halom (Pelican-mound) near Békésszentandrás: the largest kurgan in Hungary.

The press release about the conference can be read here (in Hungarian).

Our new paper is published about the effects of steppe mice on the vegetation of agroecosystems

Our new paper by Laura Godó et al. has recently been published in Agriculture, Ecosystems and Environment about the effect of mound-building and caching activities of the steppe mouse.

Reference

Godó, L., Valkó, O., Borza, S., Ferencz, A., Kiss, R., Lukács, K., Deák, B. (2024) Effects of mound building and caching by steppe mouse (Mus spicilegus Petényi) on the vegetation in agroecosystems. Agriculture, Ecosystems and Environment 379: 109359. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.agee.2024.109359.

The paper is open access and can be downloaded from here.

To analyse the complex effects of caching rodents on agroecosystems, we selected the steppe mouse (Mus spicilegus Petényi, 1882), a small outdoor mouse, as a model species. It is a common herbivorous rodent inhabiting grasslands and agroecosystems from eastern Austria to western Russia. Its most well-known and spectacular habitat transformation effect is mound building: in autumn, a group of mice gather and build a mound above their burrow that provides protection against harsh environmental conditions and weather elements during the winter period. The mound consists of a thick layer of piled up inflorescences, fruits, and spikes covered by shallow bare soil layer. Therefore, these mounds are very interesting objects for vegetation dynamics: they contain huge amount of seeds, and they provide small distinct patches for plant establishment.

Our study sites in East Hungary (A), and pictures of a steppe mouse mound (B) and the studied agroecosystems: old-fields (C), alfalfa fields (D) and annual crop fields (E).

Our findings suggest that small-scale disturbances, like mound-building by the steppe mouse, contribute to maintaining plant diversity in otherwise uniform agroecosystems. The mounds provide low-competition sites with unique resources, creating small vegetation patches that differ from surrounding areas. The steppe mouse may act as a "facultative engineer" species, influencing vegetation based on habitat type. However, the mounds are often short-lived due to agricultural activity, leading to a constantly shifting pattern of mound sites, which temporarily facilitate plant establishment.

Seed analysis of the mouse's caches showed a preference for a few weed species, but only a few of these appeared in the vegetation on mounds. This finding suggests that while mounds provide good conditions for cached weeds, they don’t result in significant weed growth, which may help change farmers' perceptions of these rodents as pests. As a common species adapted to disturbed habitats and expanding across Europe due to milder winters, the steppe mouse may increasingly affect agroecosystem structure and function in the region.

Abstract

Several rodent species are considered ecosystem engineers. They exert profound changes in agroecosystems by disturbing the soil during their activities. The steppe mouse (Mus spicilegus) inhabits various agroecosystems and constructs conspicuous mounds for overwintering using piled up plant material and soil. These mounds are widespread in many agroecosystems and may significantly affect the vegetation. In our study, we evaluated the effect of mound building activity of the steppe mouse on the vegetation of agroecosystems in Hungary. We sampled the cache content of 90 mounds in total located in old fields, alfalfa fields, and annual crop fields, and surveyed the aboveground vegetation of the mounds and their surrounding undisturbed matrix in 39 paired plots. Mice cached large amounts of seeds belonging mostly to weeds. In total we found 50,413 germinable seeds of 30 species in the cache content samples. However, the mound vegetation and the cache shared only a few species, suggesting that seeds cached by the mice do not contribute to the regenerating vegetation on the mounds. Soil disturbance by mice created distinct vegetation patches with species composition and structure different from the neighbouring undisturbed matrix. Early secondary successional vegetation patches on mounds introduced small-scale heterogeneity into the homogenous agricultural landscape, increased plant diversity and provided distinct flower resources for pollinators. The detected differences in the aboveground vegetation between the mound and the matrix in the studied habitats suggest that the steppe mouse acts as a facultative engineer species in agroecosystems.