Toponym diversity can support vegetation naturalness: Our new paper in People and Nature

Our new paper about the connections between cultural diversity and vegetation naturalness has recently been accepted in People and Nature.

Valkó, O., & Bede, Á., Rádai, Z., Deák, B. (2023): ‘Sense of place’ and conservation: Toponym diversity helps to maintain vegetation naturalness. People and Nature https://doi.org/10.1002/pan3.10476 [IF2021: 7.500]

The paper is open access and freely available on the journal homepage (please click here).

 Giving a name is a fundamental way of recognizing and identifying a place. Place names (toponyms) are an important part of cultural diversity and reflect the cultural importance of a place. Little is known about whether the diversity of toponyms (ie the number of names given to a specific place) has an influence on human-nature relationships and the decisions of humans on how to use certain parts of the landscape. To investigate this question, we combined approaches from social sciences and ecology in a comprehensive multidisciplinary survey of 1,521 cultural landscape features in Hungary.

The landscape features studied were ancient millennia-old burial earthen mounds built by nomadic steppic tribes. Today the mounds often hold the last remnants of grassland vegetation and provide safe havens for grassland specialist plant and animal species in the intensively used agricultural landscapes of Eurasia. In our research, we compiled a comprehensive database of the mounds in the 5,150 km2-sized study region and by using various written sources, we collected all toponyms of the mounds recorded since the 18th century. We also visited all the mounds in a field survey and evaluated the naturalness degree of their vegetation, which ranged from favorable (covered by grasslands of high conservation value) to degraded (covered by degraded non-crop vegetation), transformed (ploughed), and destroyed.

We found that despite the intensive landscape transformation in the region, and independently of topographical factors (ie height of the mound, distance from the nearest settlement), a higher number of toponyms per mound was associated with a higher degree of naturalness of the vegetation. This result is especially interesting, as in the studied intensively used agricultural landscape, cultural recognition of the mounds has eroded considerably in the past centuries, but its effect is still noticeable. We believe that revitalizing public recognition of place names could enable effective and meaningful communication about cultural ties to particular landscape elements. In a broader sense, our results highlight that reestablishment of the lost cultural connections between people and nature can contribute to reversing the deterioration.

Ludas-halom mound had the highest number of toponyms - as many as twenty! Photo: Ádám Bede.

Public outreach program about invasive species in Vácrátót

On 13 May, the Centre for Ecological Research organised this year's first Garden on the Cube event, in which our research team was actively involved.

 

The event was linked to the research of the Invasion Biology Division of the National Laboratory for Health Security, and presented the importance and results of this research program in an interactive format. 

 

As usual, it was a great experience to participate :)

 

Conference organization: the 18th Eurasian Grassland Conference

It is our pleasure to announce that our research group organizes the 18th Eurasian Grassland Conference in Szarvas, Hungary.

The registration is now open at https://www.egc2023.hu/.

The four-day-long conference (25-28 September 2023) will be followed by an optional post-conference excursion (29 September – 1 October 2023).

Key dates:

Deadline for IAVS travel grant application: 31 May  2023
Deadline for registration: 30 June 2023
Deadline for abstract submission: 30 June 2023

All details can be found on the homepage (https://www.egc2023.hu/).

The conference is organized by Balázs Deák, Orsolya Valkó and András Kelemen and our research group (Centre for Ecological Research) and the Körös-Maros National Park Directorate. The organizers are looking forward to meeting many EDGG members in the interesting scientific sessions and show the flora, fauna, natural beauties and conservation challenges related to the diverse grassland habitats of the Hungarian Great Plain during the mid-conference and post-conference excursions.

Any questions related to the conference can be addressed to the organizers (organizers.egc2023@gmail.com).

The local organizing committee in a group meeting in Szarvas.

Understanding the attitude and habits of drivers can help mitigating animal-vehicle collisions - Our new paper in Journal of Environmental Management

Our new paper by Sándor Borza and Laura Godó has recently been accepted in Journal of Environmental Management. 

Borza, S. & Godó, L., Valkó, O., Végvári, Z., Deák B. (2023): Better safe than sorry – Understanding the attitude and habits of drivers can help mitigating animal-vehicle collisions. Journal of Environmental Management 339: 117917. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jenvman.2023.117917 [IF2021: 8.910]

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

One of the most important ecological impacts of roads is the fragmentation of natural habitats, which makes collisions with vehicles a significant threat to wildlife. The aim of our research was to understand the human factors behind animal-vehicle collisions through a large sample questionnaire survey. A total of 2,123 people completed the questionnaire, which is an outstanding number. Our results show that almost half of all drivers have had at least one collision with an animal. The graphical abstract below summarises the main message of the article.

The graph shows how many animals from each group respondents have hit in their lifetime. The colours mean: green - not hit; grey - can't remember if hit; yellow - hit once; red - hit more than once. It can be seen that there is a significant proportion of grey area for reptiles, amphibians, and small mammals, meaning that many people did not remember or were not sure whether they had hit an animal in that category. This is because members of these groups are small, move at ground level and often move at night, even in rainy weather. These all make detection difficult. Furthermore, because they do not pose a serious road safety risk or cause damage to the vehicle, they are more forgettable when hit, as opposed to, for example, a songbird loudly hitting the windscreen or a pet animal that may be more memorable if hit because of the emotional attachment.

We found that male drivers, those who drive long distances per year, and those who use secondary roads most often and drive large vehicles such as buses or trucks, are more likely to be involved in collisions with animals during their lifetime. Previous studies have shown that men and women drive differently and have very different attitudes to rules and restrictions in many ways, which affects the number of accidents, including animal-vehicle collisions. Unfortunately, it can be said that if you travel a lot, sooner or later you will hit an animal. With regard to road types, while primary roads are mostly protected by fences and  wildlife crossings, this is not the case for secondary roads. However, it is worth noting that fences do not provide 100% protection, but can give people a false sense of security. Even on sections protected by fences, you should always be aware of animals wandering onto the road! In addition to having a larger impact surface, large vehicles are much less manoeuvrable safely to avoid a collision. These two factors together significantly increase the likelihood of an animal being hit.

Drivers' attitudes towards the importance of nature conservation and road safety in relation to animal-vehicle collisions were significantly influenced by whether they had ever been involved in a hit-and-run accident in their lives. Our results showed that people were sensitised by the sight of animals being hit and felt it was important to reduce the number of hits. A very large number of drivers, 797 in total, wrote a list of things they thought were useful in preventing collisions in their own words. Most of them suggested the installation of physical protection (fences and wildlife barriers).

A practical tip: if it is impossible to avoid a collision, the safest thing to do is to brake and keep the vehicle straight, rather than catching the steering wheel. Unfortunately, the natural avoidance mechanism makes this difficult to do, but it is not impossible and it makes a big difference to get out of the incident unscathed.

Zólyomi Award to Hungarian vegetation ecologists

On the ceremony of the 'Zólyomi Bálintné Barna Piroska' award, excellent Hungarian vegetation ecologists received recognition at the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, on 14th March. This years awardees were Balázs Deák, Attila Takács, and Csaba Tölgyesi. Congratulations to all of them!

The awardees: Attila Takács, Balázs Deák, Csaba Tölgyesi

 

Environmental heterogeneity increases the conservation value of karst dolines - Our new paper in Science of the Total Environment

Our new paper, about the biodiversity-environmental heterogeneity relationships in karst landscapes by Zoltán Bátori has recently been published in the journal Science of the Total Environment.

The citation of the paper:

Bátori, Z., Valkó, O., Vojtkó, A., Tölgyesi, C., Farkas, T., Frei, K., Hábenczyus, A.A., Tóth, Á., Li, G., Rádai, Z., Dulai, S., Barta, K., Erdős, L., Deák, B. (2023): Environmental heterogeneity increases the conservation value of small natural features in karst landscapes. Science of the Total Environment 872: 162120. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.scitotenv.2023.162120  [IF2021: 10.753]

The paper is open access and can be freely downloaded from the journal homepage (please click here).

In the summer of 2021, we joined the research project of Zoltán Bátori and sampled the vegetation of karst dolines in the Bükk-plateau in North-Hungary. The study site is a fascinating place with beautiful landscape, and outstandingly species-rich vegetation. It was a great pleasure to work in this nice environment and in a very good company :)

We investigated the relationship between the environmental parameters and vegetation composition of the dolines. Thes are small but very heterogeneous natural features, which harbour various micro-habitats in the north-, east-, south- and west-facing slopes and doline bottom, which are all different from the plain grasslands in terms of species composition, soil parameters and microclimatic conditions. Our results showed that thanks to this high environmental heterogeneity, the dolines provide suitable habitat conditions for species with various ecological requirements, thus, these small natural features act as biodiversity hotspots in the landscape. Our favourite landmarks, 'kurgans' (ancient steppic burial mounds) in the plain regions have similar ecological functions (we wrote about this topic in this blog post).

Abstract

Local biodiversity hotspots are often located within regions where extreme and variable environmental – e.g., climatic and soil – conditions occur. These areas are conservation priorities. Although environmental heterogeneity is recognised as an important determinant of biodiversity, studies focusing on the effects of multiple environmental heterogeneity components in the same ecosystem are scarce. Here we investigate how topography and related microclimatic variables and soil properties may influence the biodiversity and conservation value of karst landscapes. Karst landscapes of the world contain millions of dolines (i.e. bowl- or funnel-shaped depressions) that may function as ‘small natural features’ with a disproportionately large role in maintaining biodiversity relative to their size. We assessed the diversity of microclimates, soils and vegetation and their relationships in six microhabitats (south-facing slopes, east-facing slopes, west-facing slopes, north-facing slopes and bottoms of dolines, and the adjacent plateau) for nine large dolines in a grassland ecosystem. Although there were remarkable differences among the conservation value of these microhabitats (e.g., representation of different species groups, presence of ‘climate relicts’), each microhabitat had an important role in maintaining species that are rare or absent in other microhabitats in the landscape. We found that the studied dolines exhibited highly variable environmental conditions and promoted a high diversity of vegetation types with unique species composition, contributing to the topographic, climatic, soil, vegetation and land cover heterogeneity of karst landscapes. Therefore, our findings highlight that dolines may function as local biodiversity hotspots and have a crucial conservation importance. As dolines are widespread topographic features in many karst landscapes throughout the world, our results could be directly applied to other regions as well. An integrated approach is urgently needed to provide guidelines for landscape management, promoting the retention of the microhabitat diversity of small natural features for species vulnerable to climate change and/or various disturbances.

EASAC Regenerative Agriculture report - Policy roundtable in Brussels

The 44th report of the European Academies Science Advisory Council (EASAC), entitled 'Regenerative Agriculture in Europe - A critical analysis of contributions to the European Union Farm to Fork and Biodiversity Strategies' has recently been launched. The full report is available online in the EASAC homepage. We wrote an earlier blog post about the report, which you can read here.

Last week there was a very interesting and successful discussion event related to the Regenerative Agriculture report in Brussels, in the Library of the European Parliament. Thomas Elmqvist and Orsolya Valkó presented the main results of the report, and the presentation was followed by a lively and thought-provoking discussion. The full event was recorded and the video is available here.