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

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.

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.

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.