2) Impacts of climate change: predictions based on experiments and model simulations

2.1 Climate experiments at Fülöpháza

We have previously shown that disturbances increase ecosystem sensitivity to climate change. However, most climate change experiments in the past took place in intact, undisturbed ecosystems, and ,indeed, most of these studies found no major vegetation shift. Therefore, we now conduct a new experiment, where climate change treatment (drought) is done in combination with disturbance. This disturbance leads to the dieback of present vegetation, thus we can asses how altered climate affects recovery after disturbance. In addition, we investigate how drought and disturbance affects the establishment of invasive plants already present in the landscape.

Publications
Szitár, K, Gy Kröel-Dulay & K Török (2018) Invasive Asclepias syriaca can have facilitative effects on native grass establishment in a water‐stressed ecosystem. Applied Vegetation Science. doi: 10.1111/avsc.12397
Ónodi, G. et al. ... (2017) Comparing the accuracy of three non-destructive methods in estimating aboveground plant biomass. Community Ecology 18(1):56-62
Ónodi, G. et al. ... (2017) Estimating aboveground herbaceous plant biomass via proxies: The confounding effects of sampling year and precipitation. Ecological Indicators 79:355-360

2.2 Modelling the potential natural vegetation

Potential natural vegetation (PNV) estimates which vegetation type could prevail under a actual environmental conditions at a given locaiton. This can support conservation and restoration decisions as well as landscape evaluation. In our research we estimate and further analyse the PNV for the complete territory of Hungary.

Publications
Somodi, I. et al. ... (2017) Implementation and application of multiple potential natural vegetation models – a case study of Hungary. Journal of Vegetation Science, in press, available on-line
Somodi, I., N. Lepesi, Z. Botta-Dukát (2017) Prevalence dependence in model goodness measures with special emphasis on true skill statistics. Ecology and Evolution 7(3): 863-872

2.3 Ecosystem approach modelling of climate change and land use change in space and time

The Biome-BGCMuSo model is devoted to simulate energy and carbon cycling run of terrestrial ecosystems according to different climate change scenarios and daily meteorology dataset. Various agriculture or forest managemet methods and practices can be set also, that makes the model to an important tool in understanding and predicting ecosystem functionung under varous drivers.

Publications
Horváth F., Á. Bede-Fazekas, D. Ittzés, A. Kovács-Hostyánszki and E Tanács (2020) Serve as Ecosystem Minister - on-line simulation game to turn back ominous ecological changes. Institute of Ecology and Botany, Centre for Ecological Research, URL - http://okoszisztema-miniszter.hu/