Ákos Bede-Fazekas

Hungarian Academy of Sciences | HAS · Institute of Ecology and Botany

Due to their potential role in pathogen transmission, invasive mosquitoes pose considerable threats to human and animal health. Several studies have identified the most important ecological drivers mediating the establishment and spread of key mosquito species (e.g., Aedes aegypti, and Ae. albopictus), and made predictions for future distribution....

As the world is struggling to halt the rapid decline of biodiversity, the assessment and mapping of ecosystem condition is getting ever increasing attention. Croplands are artificial ecosystems, but as they occupy a large portion of land, they significantly influence biodiversity. Yet, there is a knowledge gap about their suitability to support and...

In an era of ongoing biodiversity, it is critical to map biodiversity patterns in space and time for better‐informing conservation and management. Species distribution models (SDMs) are widely applied in various types of such biodiversity assessments. Cross‐validation represents a prevalent approach to assess the discrimination capacity of a target...

Modeling how climate change may affect the potential distribution of species and communities typically utilizes bioclimatic variables. Distribution predictions rely on the values of the bioclimatic variable (e.g., precipitation of the wettest quarter). However, the ecological meaning of most of these variables depends strongly on the within-year po...

Soil organic matter (SOM) concentration and composition are essential properties that affect most functions and ecosystem services. The relationship between soil and environmental covariates regarding SOM concentration and composition in various pools is not completely understood. This study aimed to identify the most influential drivers of SOM sta...

Free-range domestic pig keeping in forests is a millennia-old practice in Eurasia, and remains common in many silvopastoral systems worldwide. Despite the long history of its potential impact on forests, the influence of this practice on the structure, composition and species richness of the understorey is hardly known. We studied the impact of fre...

Site-specific management requires the identification of treatment areas based on homogeneous characteristics. This study aimed to determine whether soil mapping based on apparent soil electrical conductivity (EC a) is suitable for mapping soil properties of fields with topographic heterogeneity. Research was conducted on two neighbouring fields in...

Correlative species distribution models (SDMs) are important tools to estimate species’ geographic distribution across space and time, but their reliability heavily relies on the availability and quality of occurrence data. Estimations can be biased when occurrences do not fully represent the environmental requirement of a species. We tested to wha...

Aims Ecological strategies can provide information about plant community assembly and its main drivers. Our aim was to reveal the dominant strategies of the vegetation types of forest–grassland mosaics and to deduce the assembly processes responsible for their species composition. Location Hungary. Methods We investigated eight vegetation types o...

Questions Due to their high ecological and agronomical variability, borderland regions offer an excellent opportunity to study assembly patterns. In this study we compared the influence of various factors on summer annual weed communities consisting of both native and introduced species. Location The borderland region of Austria and Hungary. Meth...

Aim Climate change is affecting the geographic distributions of many species and researchers are increasingly relying on species distribution models (SDMs) to forecast species' redistributions under climate change. Such modelling studies, however, often ignore biotic interactions that shape species' geographic ranges. This is especially problematic...

The main objective of the research was to study the environmental “price” of the large-scale, milk production from a rarely known perspective, from the mapping of the estrogenic footprint (the amount of oestrus-inducer hormonal products, and the generated endoestrogens) in the resulting slurry in a dairy cow farm. These micropollutants are endocrin...

Ecosystem restoration is increasingly recognized as a means of climate change mitigation. Former global-scale studies predicted that ecosystem restoration can nearly offset human carbon emission since the Industrial Revolution 1,2 , but these were heavily criticized for their tree-centric view or questionable modeling approaches 3,4 , which hinders...

Eurasian forest-steppes form a 9000-km-long transitional zone between temperate forests and steppes, featuring a complex mosaic of herbaceous and woody habitats. Due to its heterogeneity regarding climate, topography and vegetation, the forest-steppe zone has been divided into several regions. However, a continental-scale empirical delineation of t...

The role of landscape diversity and structure is crucial for maintaining biodiversity. Both landscape diversity and structure have often been analysed on one thematic layer, focusing on Shannon diversity. The application of compositional diversity, however, has received little attention yet. Our main goal was to introduce a novel framework to asses...

Human well-being needs healthy ecosystems, providing multiple ecosystem services. Therefore, the assessment of ecosystems on large scales is a priority action. In Hungary, this work (MAES-HU) took place between 2016 and 2022. Twelve ecosystem services (ES) were mapped and assessed along with several ecosystem condition (EC) indicators. Their integr...

Plant hardiness zone maps (PHZMs) are isometric map representations of the continuous extreme minimum temperature surface that are easy to interpret and widely used. Hardiness zone map can have remarkable uncertainty from several sources, e.g. downscaling, climate variability and intermodel/interscenario variability. A systematic review of the lite...

Along small watercourses, the growth and renewal of native willows and poplars (Sali-caceae species) are hindered by the effects of past and recent man-made landscape alteration and climate change, while the selective foraging of the beaver (Castor fiber) is also becoming an increasingly important driver. Knowledge about foraging decisions can refi...

Vegetation-based landscape classifications reflecting combinations of different vegetation types promote the understanding of landscape patterns and ecological restoration. However, widespread landscape classifications containing a single thematic resolution may oversimplify landscape patterns. This study aimed at providing a solution for and testi...

Recent advances in ecology and biogeography demonstrate the importance of fire and large herbivores – and challenge the primacy of climate – to our understanding of the distribution, stability, and antiquity of forests and grasslands. Among grassland ecologists, particularly those working in savannas of the seasonally dry tropics, an emerging fire–...

A nemzetközi irodalmat is áttekintve azt találtuk, hogy az intenzív tejelő szarvasmarhatartásban felhasznált ivarzásindukáló hormonkészítmények mennyiségét és a hígtrágyában való megjelenését még nem vizsgálták. Kutatásunkban egy Pest megyei szarvasmarhatelepen használt 5 különböző ivarzásindukáló gyógyszer (Alfaglandin, PGF, Dinolytic, Gonavet, Ov...

Herbivore species can either hinder or accelerate the invasion of woody species through selective utilization. Therefore, an exploration of foraging decisions can contribute to the understanding and forecasting of woody plant invasions. Despite the large distribution range and rapidly growing abundance of beaver species across the Northern Hemisphe...

The availability of robust and reliable spatial information on ecosystem condition is of increasing importance in informing conservation policy. Recent policy requirements have sparked a renewed interest in conceptual questions related to ecosystem condition and practical aspects like indicator selection, resulting in the emergence of conceptual fr...

Agriculture faces several challenges to use the available resources in a more environmentally sustainable manner. One of the most significant is to develop sustainable water management. The modern Internet of Things (IoT) techniques with real-time data collection and visualisation can play an important role in monitoring the readily available moist...

Phacelia tanacetifolia, an excellent cover, green manure and honey crop is now widely cultivated throughout the world. One of its principal European seed production regions is north-western Hungary, where the recent withdrawal of a potent herbicide, linuron, created a new challenge for many growers. The goal of this study is to identify the main fa...

Worldwide populations of shorebirds are declining, associated with a complex interplay of climate change, predation, human disturbance and habitat degradation. Comprehensive information on the distribution and breeding ecology of shorebird populations is crucial to understand and mitigate these threats. Kazakhstan, the largest country in Central As...

Naturalness and hemeroby indicator values are specialized species-based indicators used in Continental Europe that reflect plant species’ affinity to degraded habitats. Despite their potential utility for basic and applied science, their similarities have gone unnoticed, and they have yet to be studied together. Here, we combine literature review a...

High-resolution ecosystem maps increase the efficiency of policy implementation. However due to challenges related to both data and methods, such maps of appropriate scale and quality are still rarely available for nationwide analyses. We present solutions to some typical challenges of national-scale ecosystem mapping through the new Ecosystem Map...

Background : The concept of potential natural vegetation (PNV) embodies mature vegetation capable to survive under the environmental conditions of a site. Despite its widespread use, its applicability under the current level of human impacts on the environment has been criticised. Aims : We re-examine the original publication of the PNV concept an...

The high nature conservation value of floodplain ecosystems is severely threatened by invasive alien species. Besides adversely affecting native biodiversity, these species also pose a major threat from a wider socio-ecological perspective (e.g. ‘roughness’ increases flood risk). Finding options to control dense shrub layers consisting of invasive...

European countries are far from the 15% restoration target to be reached by 2020, partly due to the lack of large-scale studies at the national level that would help prioritize restoration efforts. We investigated the regeneration capacity and the determining environmental factors at the national level for three Pannonian sandy habitat types. The a...

Bioclimatic variables (BCVs) are routinely used in potential distribution models, typically without considering their calculation options in detail. We aimed at studying the impact of a decision, yet unexamined, on the calculation of BCVs, namely whether the identity of specific months/quarters in the calculation of BCVs should be updated for the f...

Broader understanding of stakeholders' perceptions of landscape changes is needed to cope with global environmental challenges locally. In this study, farmers' and conservationists'-researchers' perceptions of landscape changes were compared by analyzing interviews conducted in the Danube-Tisza Interfluve region of Hungary through a combined quanti...

In the absence of primeval floodplain forests, near-natural remnants are key references for close-to-nature forestry and nature conservation. Old-growth forest characteristics (OGCs) were quantified in 16 managed (rotation or selection) and abandoned semi-natural floodplain forests by taking snapshot inventories of structural features. Principal co...

Karst aquifers represent the most important renewable sources of drinking water. Because anthropogenic influences threaten the integrity of karst aquifers, it is important to determine the soil erosion and karst denudation rates. In order to study the complex signs of degradation processes of the karst, a paleodoline (paleo-polje) was selected near...

Featuring a transitional zone between closed forests and treeless steppes, forest-steppes cover vast areas, and have outstanding conservation importance. The components of this mosaic ecosystem can conveniently be classified into two basic types, forests and grasslands. However, this dichotomic classification may not fit reality as habitat organiza...

To preserve the natural genetic pattern of species and to avoid the introduction of non-adapted ecotypes during restoration, seed transfer should be spatially restricted. Instead of applying administrative borders in the absence of species-specific empirical data, biogeographical knowledge can be used as a proxy. Hungary was used as a suitable test...

Background: Impact of climate change on tick-borne encephalitis (TBE) prevalence in the tick-host enzootic cycle in a given region depends on how the region-specific climate change patterns influence tick population development processes and tick-borne encephalitis virus (TBEV) transmission dynamics involving both systemic and co-feeding transmiss...

Featuring a transitional zone between closed forests and treeless steppes, forest-steppes cover vast areas and have outstanding conservation importance. The components of this mosaic ecosystem can conveniently be classified into two basic types, forests and grasslands. However, this dichotomic classification may not fit reality as habitat organizat...

At present in Hungary, detailed habitat maps created with field mapping are available for only part of the country’s area, and not even for all nature conservation areas. The ecosystem type map briefly introduced in this article cannot replace such maps, but it has more detailed spatial and thematic resolution compared to the national-scale databas...

The Carpathian Basin is one of the most important regions in terms of the invasion of the common ragweed (Ambrosia artemisiifolia) in Europe. The invasion history of this weed, however, seems to have been assessed differently in Austria and Hungary: scientists in both countries assumed that this species had become abundant earlier and had caused mo...

As a transitional zone between forests and steppes, the forest-steppe belt is thought to exhibit steep latitudinal vegetation changes. However, earlier studies have focused on only one habitat type, disregarding forest-steppe heterogeneity. We examined the compositional and species richness trends along a centre-to-periphery gradient in Hungary, ac...

Students' solutions of enumerative combinatorial problems may be assessed along two main dimensions: the correctness of the solution and the method of enumeration. This study looks at the second dimension with reference to the Cartesian product of two sets, and at the 'odometer' combinatorial strategy defined by English (1991). Since we are not awa...

Global climate change is predicted to affect both the spatial and annual distributions of vector-borne diseases. Tick-borne diseases are particularly sensitive to the changing climatic conditions. Modelling them is, however, challenging due to the input-intensity of these models. A framework with low number of inputs (easily accessible weekly tempe...

Estimating the tick-borne encephalitis (TBE) infection risk under substantial uncertainties of the vector abundance, environmental condition and human-tick interaction is important for evidence-informed public health intervention strategies. Estimating this risk is computationally challenging since the data we observe, i.e., the human incidence of...

Climate of Hungary, Central Europe, is predicted to undergo substantial aridification by 2100 due to the decrease of precipitation in the summer season. Dendrology and ornamental plant application require adaptation to these climatic changes. This paper aims at giving guidance for landscape architects, dendrologist, and horticulturists by providing...

Climate change is expected to exert considerable influence on natural ecosystems all over the world, though not all ecosystems are equally vulnerable to the changes. In this paper, an assessment framework of vulnerability of natural habitats to future climate change is presented, examining Hungary, Central Eastern Europe as a case study. A climate...

Several natural habitats are expected to be sensitive to climate, and their vulnerability to future climate change can be further increased by their insufficient capacity to adapt to the changes. Therefore, it is increasingly pressing to set up methodologies for assessing sensitivity and adaptive capacity of natural ecosystems for enhancing detaile...

Climate fluctuations of the Quaternary caused radical changes in distribution of tree species and resulted in large-scale range shifts, population contractions and expansions. Scots pine (Pinus sylvestris L.) a widely distributed conifer of the boreal regions underwent spatio-temporal changes, which shaped the modern-day genetic structure and phylo...

Questions Multiple Potential Natural Vegetation (MPNV) is a framework for the probabilistic and multilayer representation of potential vegetation in an area. How can an MPNV model be implemented and synthesized for the full range of vegetation types across a large spatial domain such as a country? What additional ecological and practical informatio...

Aedes albopictus is the potential vector of several pathogens. Recently, the South Pannonian ecoregion has been the border of the east Mediterranean established range of the species. We aimed to determine the current range limiting factors, to predict the potential seasonality and to model the future distribution of the mosquito in the Carpathian B...

Dirofilariosis is an emerging mosquito-borne veterinary and medical problem in the Northern hemisphere. The ecological investigation of 56 canine dirofilariosis cases in new endemic locations was performed in Szeged, Hungary. The aim was to analyse the influence of the spatial patterns of dog abundance and the potential mosquito breeding habitats o...

Growth patterns of different plant species are primarily determined by edaphic factors, climate conditions and their species-specific adaptation properties. Changing sub-regional aridity trends due to the projected climate change like soil erosion and the invasion of alien plant species threaten the ligneous vegetation of karst areas. We aimed to s...

The development and the geological activity of the Meggyespuszta paleodoline in Hungary were reconsidered in the light of new findings and review of complex stratigraphic and morphological results. Methods included geomorphological modeling, field geological re-surveys of the data from the existing boreholes and study of the sediments of a newly dr...

Stylization is a common method of ornamental plant use that imitates nature and evokes the scenery. This paper discloses a not yet proposed aspect of stylization, since the method offers the possibility of preserving the physiognomy of those habitats that seem to vanish due to future climate change. In addition, novelty of the method is founded als...

Background & objectives: In the Carpathian Basin, the most northern populations of Phlebotomus (sandfly) species, including the two studied species (Phlebotomus mascittii and Phlebotomus neglectus), are reported from central Hungary. The most important limiting factor of the distribution of Phlebotomus species in the region is the annual minimum te...

Climate change highly impacts on tree growth and also threatens the forest of the karstic terrains. From the 1980’s the frequency of decay events of the Pinus nigra Arnold forests showed a marked increase in Hungary. To understanding the vulnerability of Pinus nigra forests to climate change on shallow karstic soils in continental-sub Mediterranean...

This article is about the development and application of an ESRI ArcGIS tool that implements a multilayer, feed-forward artificial neural network (ANN) to study the climate envelopes of species. The supervised learning is achieved by a backpropagation algorithm. Based on the distribution and the grids of the climate (and edaphic data) of the refere...

Leishmaniasis is one of the most important emerging vector-borne diseases in Western Eurasia. Although winter minimum temperatures limit the present geographical distribution of the vector Phlebotomus species, the heat island effect of the cities and the anthropogenic heat emission together may provide the appropriate environment for the overwinter...

The importance and risk of emerging mosquito borne diseases is going to increase in the European temperate areas due to climate change. The present and upcoming climates of Transdanubia seem to be suitable for the main vector of Chikungunya virus, the Asian tiger mosquito, Aedes albopictus Skuse (syn. Stegomyia albopicta). West Nile fever is recent...

The impact of climate change on the potential distribution of four Mediterranean pine species – Pinus brutia Ten., Pinus halepensis Mill., Pinus pinaster Aiton, and Pinus pinea L. – was studied by the Climate Envelope Model (CEM) to examine whether these species are suitable for the use as ornamental plants without frost protection in the Carpathia...