Miglécz et al. (2015) Scientia Horticulturae

Miglécz, T., Valkó, O., Török, P., Deák, B., Kelemen, A., Donkó, Á., Drexler, D., Tóthmérész, B. (2015): Species rich cover crop seed mixtures support organic farming in vineyards. Scientia Horticulturae, doi:10.1016/j.scienta.2015.09.017

Abstract
Developing sustainable farming practices to support ecosystem functions and services are key issues of agro-ecology and conservation biology. In organic wine production, preserving soil fertility and weed control are essentialtasks, because the use of synthetically processed herbicides, pesticides and fertilizers is strongly limited. Thus, itis vitalto propose and test alternative techniques to link issues of weed control, preservation of soil fertility and the improvement and conservation of agro-biodiversity. To fulfil these issues, the use of species-rich cover crops became increasingly integrated into organic wine production. We evaluated the establishment of three vineyard cover crop seed mixtures sown in the vineyards of the Tokaj region, East-Hungary to answer the following questions: (i) which sown species were successfully established during the first year after sowing? (ii) Which sown species established successfully even during the second year? (iii) How effective were the sown cover crop seed mixtures in weed control? We evaluated three types of species-rich seed mixtures: Biocont-ECOWIN, Grass-medical forb and Legume seed mixtures. Percentage cover of vascular plant species was recorded in the inter-rows in five 1 × 1 m permanent plots in late June, 2012 and 2013. All sown species established within the study period. During the first year mostly short-lived species established successfully from the sown seed mixtures. During the second year Lotus corniculatus, Medicago lupulina, Plantago lanceolata, Trifolium repens and Trifolium pratense established the most successfully, and had high cover scores at most sites out of the sown species. A significant weed suppression was detected for all sown mixtures (Biocont-ECOWIN seed mixture: at two sites; Grass-medical forb seed mixture: at every site; Legume seed mixture: at two sites). The magnitude of weed suppression varied with the sown seed mixture. During the first year BiocontECOWIN seed mixture was the most successful in weed suppression. During the second year the cover of weeds was suppressed most effectively by Grass-medical forb and Legume seed mixtures. Our findings suggest that high diversity seed mixtures are suitable to establish permanent cover crops, which enables to use them successfully at sites with different abiotic conditions.


Keywords
Agro-biodiversity, Biodiversity, Ecosystem services, Grapevine, Soil protection, Weed management

Ferrante et al. (2014) European Journal of Entomology

Ferrante M, Lo Cacciato A, Lövei GL (2014): Quantifying predation pressure along an urbanisation gradient in Denmark by using artificial caterpillars. European Journal of Entomology 111: 649-654. doi: 10.14411/eje.2014.082

Abstract

Urbanisation results in a marked modification of habitats and influences several ecological processes, some of which give rise to beneficial ecological services. Natural pest control, the effect of predators on prey is one of such services. We quantified changes in the incidence of predation with increasing levels of urbanisation using artificial caterpillars made of green plasticine. Potential predators can be identified by the “attack marks” they leave on these artificial caterpillars. We conducted this study from May to October 2010 around the city of Sorø (Zealand, Denmark), in forests along an urbanisation gradient (rural-suburban-urban). Artificial caterpillars were placed on the ground in order to obtain an estimate of the incidence of predation at ground level. Half (50%) of the 1398 caterpillars were “attacked” and 28.8% of the bites were those of chewing insects. We attributed the majority of these to carabids, the most common group of ground-active arthropods. Chewing insects exerted the greatest predation pressure in the original forest (52.1%), with lower values recorded in the suburban (10.1%) and urban (16.4%) forest fragments. Ants were responsible for only 4.7% of the attacks in forest, 11.3% in suburban and 16.4% in urban forest fragments. Mammals exerted the highest predation pressure in suburban
habitats (22.2% vs. 4.9% in forest, and 8.1% in urban forest fragments).

Keywords

Carabidae, Formicidae, fragmentation, natural enemies, ecosystem services, predation, urbanisation, sentinel prey

Gilioli et al. (2014) Science of the Total Environment

Gilioli G, Schrader G,Baker RHA, Ceglarska E, Kertész VK, Lövei GL, Navajas M, Rossi V, Tramontini S & Van Lenteren VC (2014): Environmental riskassessment for plant pests: a procedure to evaluate their impacts on ecosystemservices. Science of the Total Environment468-469: 475-486.

Abstract

The current methods to assess the environmental impacts of plant pests differ in their approaches and there is a lack of the standardized procedures necessary to provide accurate and consistent results, demonstrating the complexity of developing a commonly accepted scheme for this purpose. By including both the structural and functional components of the environment threatened by invasive alien species (IAS), in particular plant pests, we propose an environmental risk assessment scheme that addresses this complexity. Structural components are investigated by evaluating the impacts of the plant pest on genetic, species and landscape diversity. Functional components are evaluated by estimating how plant pests modify ecosystem services in order to determine the extent to which an IAS changes the functional traits that influence ecosystem services. A scenario study at a defined spatial and temporal resolution is then used to explore how an IAS, as an exogenous driving force, may trigger modifications in the target environment. The method presented here provides a standardized approach to generate comparable and reproducible results for environmental risk assessment as a component of Pest Risk Analysis. The method enables the assessment of overall environmental risk which integrates the impacts on different components of the environment and their probabilities of occurrence. The application of the proposed scheme is illustrated by evaluating the environmental impacts of the invasive citrus long-horn beetle, Anoplophora chinensis. 

Keywords

Environmental risk, Plant pests, Invasive alien species (IAS), Ecosystem services, Functional biodiversity, Service-providing units

Valkó et al. (2013) Basic and Applied Ecology

Orsolya Valkó, Péter Török, Balázs Deák, Béla Tóthmérész (2013): Prospects and limitations of prescribed burning as a management tool in European grasslands. Basic and Applied Ecology, in press. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.baae.2013.11.002


Abstract
Grassland managers and scientists are increasingly interested in cost-effective alternative ways of grassland biodiversity conservation. Prescribed burning is a promising management tool which should be integrated in the planning of management efforts. In addition, small-scale prescribed burning is an effective fire suppression strategy to decrease the serious negative impacts of uncontrolled burnings on ecosystems and human life. Prescribed burning forms an integral part of the North-American grassland management practice, while in Europe it is rarely applied, despite the fact that uncontrolled burning occurs frequently in some regions. Our goal was to evaluate the use of prescribed burning as a promising but neglected management tool in European grasslands. We found that European studies on prescribed burning of grasslands are scarce and we conclude that annual burning is usually not an appropriate option for the conservation of species-rich grasslands. We reviewed burning studies from North-America to identify findings which might be adapted to the European grassland conservation strategy. In North-America, contrary to Europe, the application of burning is fine tuned in terms of frequency and timing, and usually combined with other restoration measures (grazing or seed sowing). Thus, we conclude that with the application of carefully designed prescribed burning, multiple conservation goals, e.g. invasion control and enhancing landscape-level heterogeneity, can be linked with an effective fire suppression strategy. We emphasize that for the application of prescribed burning in Europe, the general findings of carefully designed case studies should be combined with the practical knowledge of conservation managers concerning the local application circumstances to reach specific management objectives.


Keywords
Biomass, Ecosystem services, Fire, Grazing, Mowing, Prairie

Czúcz et al. (2012) Journal for Nature Conservation

Czúcz B., MolnárZs, Horváth F, Nagy G G, Botta-Dukát Z, Török K (2012): Using the natural capital index framework as a scalable aggregation methodology for local and regional biodiversity indicators. Journal for Nature Conservation 20 (3):144-152.

Abstract

There is an increasing need for aggregated biodiversity indicators to inform policy decisions at all levels from local to global. Despite their similar policy goals, low-level (e.g. local, regional) and high-level (e.g. continental, global) indicator development is generally performed independently, and the resulting indicators are often incompatible both in their structure and data requirements. In this paper we focus on a particularly flexible aggregation framework originally developed for global assessments, the Natural Capital Index. We show that with the use of appropriate fine-scale data, the NCI framework can be applied in low-level policy contexts as well. To support this statement, we show that several established low-level indicators are essentially conforming to the NCI framework, and can be seen as existing low-level NCI implementations. The concept is illustrated with an implementation for Hungary, and the potential advantages and shortcomings of low level NCI implementations are discussed. NCI-based low level indicators can be implemented in any region, where a local indicator of ecological quality is systematically surveyed. Given the recent surge in monitoring activities worldwide, fuelled by global change and reporting obligations, fine-scale NCI implementations can become important additions to existing ecological state indicators useful in a wide range of local and regional policy contexts.

Keywords 

Biodiversity index, Habitat quality, Naturalness, Vegetation condition, Ecosystem services