PhD dissertations in the IAVS Bulletin, Réka Kiss

The Editors of the IAVS (International Association for Vegetation Science) have launched a new and interesting topic in the IAVS Bulletin entitled 'Recently defended theses in vegetation science'. Their aim is to introduce the research topics of young vegetation scientist all over the world who have recently defended their PhD. It is a pleasure that among others, the PhD topic of my former PhD student, Réka Kiss is introduced in the current Bulletin. You can read about Réka's research topics by clicking here and going to pages 34-35.

Still life in the Hortobágy: Never-ending monitoring of the vegetation of establishment gaps..

Réka has defended her thesis in September 2018. (you can read about her defense here)

Publications related to her thesis

Kiss, R., Deák, B., Török, P., Tóthmérész, B.., Valkó, O. (2018) Grassland seed bank and community resilience in a changing climate. Restoration Ecology, 26, S141-S150. PDF

Kiss, R., Sonkoly, J., Török, P., Tóthmérész, B., Deák, B., Tóth, K., Lukács, K., Godó, L., Kelemen, A., Miglécz, T., Radócz, Sz., Tóth, E., Balogh, N., Valkó, O. (2018) Germination capacity of 75 herbaceous species of the Pannonian flora and implications for restoration. Acta Botanica Hungarica, 60, 357-368. PDF

Kiss, R., Valkó, O., Tóthmérész, B., Török, P. (2016) Seed bank research in Central-European grasslands - An overview. In: Murphy, J. (ed.) Seed Banks: Types, Roles and Research, Nova Science Publishers, 1-34. PDF

Kiss, R. (2016) A talaj-magbank szerepe a magyarországi növényközösségek dinamikájában és helyreállításában. Kitaibelia, 21, 116-135. PDF

Valkó, O., Deák, B., Török, P., Kirmer, A., Tishew, S., Kelemen, A., Tóth, K., Miglécz, T., Radócz, Sz., Sonkoly, J., Tóth, E., Kiss, R., Kapocsi, I., Tóthmérész, B. (2016) High-diversity sowing in establishment windows: a promising new tool for enhancing grassland biodiversity. Tuexenia, 36, 359-378. PDF

Török, P., Kelemen, A., Valkó, O., Miglécz, T., Tóth, K., Tóth, E., Sonkoly, J., Kiss, R., Csecserits, A., Rédei, T., Deák, B., Szűcs, P., Varga, N., Tóthmérész, B. (2017) Succession in soil seed banks and its implications for restoration of calcareous sand grasslands. Restoration Ecology, 26, S134-S140. PDF

Godó, L., Tóthmérész, B., Valkó, O., Tóth, K., Kiss, R., Radócz, Sz., Kelemen, A., Török, P., Švamberková, E., Deák, B. (2018) Ecosystem engineering by foxes is mediated by isolation in grassland fragments. Ecology and Evolution, 8, 7044-7054. PDF

Eurasian Kurgan Database

Kurgans are iconic sacred sites of the Eurasian steppes. Besides their historical and cultural values, kurgans also have a considerable conservation importance. Kurgans act as refuges for grassland habitats and species in transformed landscapes. They act as biodiversity hotspots in the extended Central-Asian steppes, maintaining the populations of many grassland species which are typically confined to kurgans.

Filagória-kurgan

Barrelier’s bugloss (Anchusa barrelieri), Jerusalem sage (Phlomis tuberosa) and the red-flowered viper's grass (Echium russicum) are just some of the typical red listed species which are confined to the kurgans in the transformed Central-European landscapes.

The flora and fauna of the kurgans are threatened by several – predominantly anthropogenic – factors such as ploughing, building, soil excavation, presence of roads and encroachment of woody invasive species. For the latter the encroachment of the black locust (Robinia pseudoacacia) and the lycium (Lycium barbatum) are typical examples. These species often encroach the kurgans of the forest steppe region, and result in a considerable decrease in grassland species.

For the effective protection of the kurgans it is of a crucial importance to have up-to-date data on their current conservation status and on the factors threatening their cultural and natural values. This information can be a good basis for setting up effective conservation plans focusing both on the conservational and the cultural values. Although in some regions there are existing databases about kurgans, generally these databases allow only a limited access to the data for conservation managers, scientists or NGOs. They often record only a small proportion of the kurgans (generally only the huge and spectacular ones are involved into the databases).

That is why we established the Eurasian Kurgan Database (http://openbiomaps.org/projects/kurgan), which aims to collect and provide basic data for setting up effective nature conservation management plans focusing on kurgan protection and also to represent the cultural values confined to the kurgans. We collect and provide basic information relevant for conservation and management, and can be collected even by non-professionals. The attributes to collect were selected considering that data providers are not necessarily professional biologists or geographers; thus only such data is collected which can be recognised or estimated without any previous professional training.

The database provides possibility to collect two types of data regarding the kurgans. The two levels differ in the complexity of the data provided. The ‘basic data form’ can be used for recording data about the name and the geographical position of the kurgans. There is a possibility to record more detailed data by the ‘complex data form’ which involves columns on the physical, biological and cultural attributes of the kurgans and on the factors threatening their existence.

In order to support the uploaders, we prepared two tutorial videos which can be seen here.

The main functions of the database:

- To provide a widely available, open access database for collecting and providing data on the kurgans of Eurasia. The locations are freely accessible without registration. Detailed data is also freely accessible, but for accessing it registration is needed (for registering, please send an email to the debalazs@gmail.com email address).

- To provide information for planning nature conservation activities.

- By providing possibility to record repeated observations the database can provide a basis for monitoring purposes (e.g. detecting the changes in the cover of woody species).

- The database also provides a public repository for cultural values (such as cultural buildings, tales, sagas) confined to the kurgans.

At the moment we have 362 data points in Eurasia. Promising start, but we have to go further. :)

Data points from Hungary

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 at least 5% of the available data on the complex data form will be offered a co-authorship in the forthcoming publications (Further details in the „Terms and conditions” of the database). 

Please if you are interested in taking part in the data collection and publication, send an email to the debalazs@gmail.com email address. 

Citation of the Database: 

Deák B. (2019): Eurasian Kurgan Database. doi: 10.18426/10.18426/obm.3mbbectm2bmg

Many thanks to Miklós Bán and Ferenc Báthori for their lot of work during the establishment and development of the Database. Csaba Tóth, Gábor Szilágyi, Ádám Bede, Orsolya Valkó, Laura Godó, Gábor Sramkó, Gyula Szabó and Iva Apostolova provided valuable comments, suggestions and data for the Database.

EGU General Assembly

There are only a few days left until the EGU General Assembly, which is the largest European meeting for geoscientists. Even we are biologists :) we attend this interesting multidisciplinary meeting regularly. Besides the 'hardcore' geologist sessions, there are many sessions related to ecology, nature conservation, fire regimes, climate change and land use systems. That is why this meeting is always very interesting also for us, biologists.

This year we will present four topics on the conference 

Deák, B., Valkó, O., Nagy, D., Török, P., Torma, A., Lőrinczi, G., Kelemen, A., Mizser, Sz., Nagy, A., Bede, A., Csathó, A.I., Tóthmérész, B.: Biodiversity conservation in transformed landscapes – the role of historical sites in sustaining grassland habitats and species.

Miglécz, T., Donkó, Á., Drexler, D., Valkó, O., Deák, B., Török, P., Kelemen, A., Körmöczi, Zs., Tóthmérész, B.: Biodiversity and organic agriculture – Species rich cover crops in vineyards of Hungary (Tokaj wine region). 

Tóthmérész, B., Hüse, B., Szabó, Sz., Deák, B.: Ecological network of green habitat patches:Grassland vegetation in urban habitats

Valkó, O., Kelemen, A., Miglécz, T., Török, P., Deák, B., Tóth, K., Tóth, J.P., Tóthmérész, B.: Regular burning leads to degradation in species-rich semi-natural grasslands.

New monograph on the vegetation of the Tisza valley

The 12th volume of the Tiscia monograph series is now published online. The new volume is a comprehensive monograph on the vegetation of the Tisza valley, which is among the most diverse and natural landscapes in Hungary. The authors of the monograph evaluate the vegetation composition of 34 associations based on 1500 relevés. The volume was edited by László Körmöczi and Orsolya Makra, and published by the Department of Ecology, University of Szeged.

The monograph focuses on the following orders:

Duckweed covers (Lemnetalia minoris)
Bladderwort colonies (Lemno-Utricularietalia)
Large pondweed beds (Potametalia)
Small galingale swards (Nanocyperetalia)
Reed beds (Phragmitetalia)
Water dropwort - Flowering rush communities (Oenanthetalia aquaticae)
Tall herb communities (Molinietalia)
Pannonic saline meadows (Scorzonero-Juncetalia gerardii)
Willow scrubs and galleries (Salicetalia purpureae)
Mezophilous deciduous forests (Fagetalia sylvaticae)
Subcontinental submediterranean dry deciduous forests of Southeast Europe (Quercetalia roboris)
Alder swamp woods (Alnetalia glutinosae)

We contributed to the monograph with the chapter on Pannonic saline meadows.

The citation of the monograph: Körmöczi, L., Makra, O. (Eds.): Vegetation and Fauna of Tisza River Basin III. Tiscia Monograph Series 12, Szeged, 2019.

The citation of our chapter: Deák, B., Valkó, O., Tóthmérész, B. (2019): VIII. Pannonic saline meadows - Scorzonero-Juncetalia gerardii. pp. 61-90.

Early spring aspect of a Pannonic saline meadow in the Hortobágy National Park.

The field season has started: seed bank sampling in alkaline steppes

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.

Segmentation and packing of the soil samples.

In-situ measurement of soil salinity.

Typical idillic landscape in Hortobágy: mosaic vegetation structure, traditional sweep-well and flocks of geese.

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 :)

EDGG photo story about kurgans

The Eurasian Dry Grassland Group (EDGG) has launched a new open access online journal called Palaearctic Grasslands. The journal publishes news and info about the activities of the EDGG and also welcome scientific publications about the flora, fauna and conservation of the Palaearctic grasslands.

Besides the classical scientific papers, there is an interesting new article type called 'photo story' in the Journal. Here the authors can introduce a habitat type, species or a certain area using their own photos and short commentary text. In the 2018 December issue, you can read the photo story by Balázs Deák (click here and go to page 17), about the conservation values and threatening factors of the Eurasian steppic burial mounds.

New research project on grassland fragments

We have just launched a new research project that has recently been funded by the National Research, Development and Innovation Office of Hungary. The funding scheme supports research groups with internationally outstanding results and gives recognition to those, who published a highly cited paper in the recent years. 

The list of the funded projects can be found here.

This new project is a great opportunity for the continuation of our researches about grassland fragments on ancient burial mounds. Please find below the short summary of the project, and come back to our site for updates about the results.

Project title: The role of habitat and landscape factors in grassland community assembly

Principal investigator: Balázs Deák

Summary

In the intensively used landscapes of Europe remnants of the natural vegetation often persist in small habitat islands which have an outstanding conservational importance. Grassland habitat islands of transformed landscapes are proper objects for exploring mechanisms that drive species composition and functional diversity of isolated grassland communities. In our former papers we studied the effects of landscape and habitat level drivers on the populations and metapopulations of grassland specialist and generalist plant species. In our present study, based on the findings of our former researches, we aim at revealing the drivers of functional diversity of plant and animal communities living in isolated grasslands. For the research we use isolated grasslands located on ancient burial mounds called ‘kurgans’. In our first study we reveal the effects of landscape and habitat level drivers on the functional diversity of plant and animal communities of habitat islands for which we use a geographically widely distributed multisite dataset and several taxa. We also study the role of dispersal syndromes in the maintenance of metapopulations dynamics of grassland species. In our second study we reveal the effects of historical land use changes, and changes in the composition and structure of the landscape on the functional diversity of plant and animal communities of habitat islands. We study the effects of recent land use changes (abandonment) on the habitat properties of habitat islands and test how do changes in habitat properties affect the regeneration of grassland communities.

Species-rich dry grassland fragment on an ancient burial mound in Hungary.