Restoration ecology

Restoration of degraded ecosystem is a crucial and increasingly urgent task - and hopefully the UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration will give new momentum to restoration projects worldwide. Despite that the discipline of restoration ecology is rapidly developing, there are many interesting and still open questions related to restoration planning and prioritization, development of best practices and maintenance of the restored habitats. We are engaded in several restoration projects from small-scale mesocosm experiments to landscape-scale restoration programmes, and we aim to seek best practices that can help to maximize the positive effects of the restoration efforts.

We monitor the success of large-scale grassland restoration projects using different methods: spontaneous succession, sowing of low diversity seed mixture, and hay transfer in loess, alkaline, sandy dry grasslands, and wet meadows. We also perform several small-scale experiments where we seek for solutions that can help in fine-tuning large-scale restoration measures - this is one of the main research topics of Réka Kiss. We developed a novel method called 'establishment gaps' that can help to tackle with propagule and microsite limitations and can create biodiversity hotspots in species-poor restored grasslands. To deal with microsite limitation, small gaps were created by vegetation removal and gentle soil disturbance, and against propagule limitation, diverse seed mixtures were sown. We found that this method is not only effective in creating biodiversity hotspots, but these species-rich spots were also proper propagule sources from which the target species can successfully colonize the species-poor grass matrix. In another project, we established a mesocosm experiment where we experimentally test the priority effects in restoration and after experimental disturbance we quantify the resilence of the restored communities.

Restoration could and should be an inclusive, public activity, therefore we consider civil participation and public outreach very important. With our small NGO we restore the vegetation of historical heritage sites (kurgans) in the Hortobágy National Park every year. In our new project called 'Nature at home: Supporting native plant species in urban gardens' we aim to bring nature closer to people, as a number of new researches prove that a greener environment contributes to maintaining our physical and mental health. We offer the seeds of native flowering plants from which people can choose and plant them at home. This way the participants can get one step closer to a nature-friendly home, kindergarten or school yard. Our target group is wide, anyone from the preschool age can get involved and do something for nature conservation with their own hands. We ask the participants to fill in an anonymous questionnaire and ask for feedback on the results of the planting and the experiences. With the help of the questionnaire and the feedback, we can improve our project in the future, as it can shed light on the social attitude and on the criteria for choosing an 'ornamental plant'.

Recent publications from our group in restoration ecology

Deák, B. & Valkó, O., Tóth, C.A., Botos, Á. & Novák, T. (2020): Legacies of past land use challenge grassland recovery - An example from dry grasslands on ancient burial mounds. Nature Conservation 39: 113-132.

Kiss, R., Deák, B., Tóthmérész, B., Miglécz, T., Tóth, K., Török, P., Lukács, K., Godó, L., Körmöczi, Z., Radócz, S., Borza, S., Kelemen, A., Sonkoly, J., Kirmer, A., Tischew, S. & Valkó, O. (2021): Zoochory on and off: A field experiment for trait-based analysis of establishment success of grassland species. Journal of Vegetation Science 32: e13051.

Valkó, O., Rádai, Z. & Deák, B. (2022): Hay transfer is a nature-based and sustainable solution for restoring grassland biodiversity. Journal of Environmental Management 311: 114816.

Projects related to our restoration ecology studies

Nature at home: Supporting native plant species in urban gardens - 'Mecenatúra' project, Hungarian National Research, Development and Innovation Office; 2022-2023, PI: Orsolya Valkó