János Mészáros

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Verified

János verified their affiliation via an institutional email.

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• PhD
• Senior research fellow at Institute for Soil Sciences

PermaChile Research Network The Hungarian climate and environmental change analysis programme, which is based on the inactive 6893 m high Ojos del Salado volcano, the highest volcano on Earth, and its wider surroundings on the arid Puna de Atacama Plateau, has been operating at the highest environmental monitoring site on Earth since 2012. The rese...

Peatlands play an important role as local carbon sinks and climate archives in natural environments. In addition to degradation by human activities, peatlands can also be affected by geomorphological processes such as fluvial erosion. This study used a collection of multi-temporal 3D point clouds to investigate such a situation in a valley of the C...

The European ground squirrel (EGS) is an endangered burrowing rodent of Central and South-Eastern European dry grasslands with a declining population trend. Its prehistoric and historical distribution ranges and population trend have not been analysed until now. In this study we addressed these gaps and aimed to give a comprehensive view on the spe...

Since soil spectroscopy is considered to be a fast, simple, accurate and non-destructive analytical method, its application can be integrated with wet analysis as an alternative. Therefore, development of national-level soil spectral libraries containing information about all soil types represented in a country is continuously increasing to serve a...

Large-scale maps of particle size fractions (i.e., sand, silt, and clay contents) were created for a case study based on the newly developed Profile-level Database of the Hungarian Large-Scale Soil Mapping (Hungarian acronym: NATASA). This database combines data from previous surveys, offering potential to improve soil mapping accuracy. The databas...

Empirically based approaches, like the Universal Soil Loss Equation (USLE), are appropriate for estimating mass movement attributed to rill erosion. USLE and its associates become widespread even in spatially extended studies in spite of its original plot-level concept, as well as with certain constraints on the supply of suitable input spatial dat...

Soil organic carbon (SOC), known as the most important soil attribute, affects various soil functions and services, essential for nutritious food and clean drinking water. Since recognizing its key role in many environmental challenges, there has been an increasing demand for spatial information on SOC. Our objective is to present the results of a...

The role of soil organic carbon (SOC) is crucial not only for numerous soil functions and processes but also for addressing various environmental crises and challenges we face. Consequently, the demand for information on the spatiotemporal variability of SOC is increasing, posing new methodological challenges, such as the need for information on SO...

To effectively guide agricultural management planning strategies and policy, it is important to simulate water quantity and quality patterns and to quantify the impact of land use and climate change on soil functions, soil health, and hydrological and other underlying processes. Environmental models that depict alterations in surface and groundwate...

The cotton bollworm (CBW) poses a significant risk to maize crops worldwide. This study investigated whether hyperspectral satellites offer an accurate evaluation method for monitoring maize ear damage caused by CBW larvae. The study analyzed the records of maize ear damage for four maize fields in Southeast Hungary, Csongrád-Csanád County, in 2021...

Spatially explicit, quantitative information on soil hydraulic properties is required in various modelling schemes. At European scale, EU-SoilHydroGrids proved its applicability in a number of studies, in ecological predictions, geological and hydrological hazard assessment, agri-environmental models, among others. Inspired by its continental antec...

To effectively guide agricultural management planning strategies and policy, it is important to simulate water 15 quantity and quality patterns and quantify the impact of land use and climate change on underlying processes. Environmental models that depict alterations in surface and groundwater quality and quantity at a catchment scale require subs...

The cotton bollworm (Helicoverpa armigera, Lepidoptera: Noctuidae) poses significant risks to maize. Changes in the maize plant, such as its phenology, influence the short-distance movement and oviposition of cotton bollworm adults and, thus, the distribution of the subsequent larval damage. We aim to provide an overview of future approaches to the...

Salt meadows, protected within National Parks, cannot be directly surveyed, yet understanding their soil condition is crucial. Our study indirectly estimates soil parameters (Total Salt Content (TSC), Na, and pH) related to salinization/sodification/alkalinization using spectral indices and UAV survey-derived elevation model, focusing on continenta...

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...

A közösségi tudomány – citizen science – már évtizedek óta működő kutatási forma, ahol egy-egy kutatás a lakosság segítségével valósul meg. Az „Alsóban az élet” kampány az érdeklődők bevonásával 2021 tavaszán indult hazánkban. A kutatásban résztvevők kézhez kaptak egy pamut alsóneműt, amelyet kb. 20 cm-es mélységben kellett elásniuk, ezzel „táplálé...

A critical hydrological soil attribute is the water infiltration rate (WIR) to the soil profile due to its effect on the runoff regime, leaching, soil erosion, and water availability for both plants and groundwater. Whereas the topography is a regional parameter that affects the WIR mainly due to the slope and landscape conditions, the WIR is highl...

Soil salinization is one of the main threats to soils worldwide, which has serious impacts on soil functions. Our objective was to map and assess salt-affectedness on arable land (0.85 km²) in Hungary, with high spatial resolution, using a combination of ensemble machine learning and multivariate geostatistics on three salt-affected soil indicators...

Intense soil erosion in the northern part of the Gerecse Hills, Hungary, is causing significant damage to vineyards in the area. Three vineyards in the Neszmély Wine Region were investigated to quantify the amount of eroded soils. The method was based on monitoring vineyards for one-year between July 2019 and June 2020. Every season, a set of photo...

As a means of assisting the selection of promising soil classification systems, a set of criteria were presented and tested. Inside the studied slightly saline plot World Reference Base (WRB) and Hungarian soil classification (HU) were compared at all four levels in terms of class separability, correlation to biomass, parsimony and homogeneity of c...

Methods enabling stakeholders to receive information on plant stress in agricultural settings in a timely manner can help mitigate a possible decrease in plant productivity. The present work aims to study the soil–plant interaction using field measurements of plant reflectance, soil water content, and selected soil physical and chemical parameters....

Soil moisture (SM) is an essential element in the hydrological cycle influencing land-atmosphere interactions and rainfall-runoff processes. Quantification of the spatial and temporal behaviour of SM at field scale is vital for understanding water availability in agriculture, ecosystems research, river basin hydrology and water resources management...

Burrowing mammals such as European sousliks are widespread and contribute significantly to soil ecosystem services. However, they have declined across their range and the non-invasive estimation of their actual population size has remained a challenge. Results support that the number of burrow entrances is positively correlated with population abun...

In a salt-affected alluvial plot, increased biomass is associated with increasing elevation and decreasing salt concentration. All four levels of three classification systems, the Soil Taxonomy (ST), the Hungarian classification (HU) and the WRB were evaluated in a 100 m regular grid of 85 profiles for their applicability for biomass estimation (us...

Burrowing mammals are widespread and contribute significantly to soil ecosystem services. However, how to conduct a non-invasive estimation of their actual population size has remained a challenge. Results support that the number of burrow entrances is positively correlated with population abundance and burrows’ location indicates their area of occ...

We analysed standards for the common working environment (CWE) and established a platform for project partners' harmonised reporting of project outputs. The results of OPTAINs work packages addressing specific issues of the project (actor platform, measures and indicators, data mining, modelling, optimisation) are assimilated in the following way:...

This study presents the non-invasive investigation of a Late Neolithic circular enclosure discovered not long ago. We were able to document traces of a settlement and the nearly complete layout of a treble circular enclosure system (roundel) from the Lengyel culture at Ligetfalva, Gesztenyés-dűlő in Zala County. We provide a review of the possibili...

Water infiltration rate (WIR) into the soil profile was investigated through a comprehensive study harnessing spectral information of the soil surface. As soil spectroscopy provides invaluable information on soil attributes, and as WIR is a soil surface-dependent property, field spectroscopy may model WIR better than traditional laboratory spectral...

Soil moisture (SM) is an essential element in the hydrological cycle influencing land-atmosphere interactions and rainfall-runoff processes. High-resolution mapping of SM at field scale is vital for understanding spatial and temporal behavior of water availability in agriculture. Unmanned Arial Systems (UAS) offer an extraordinary opportunity to br...

Cropmarks are a major factor in the effectiveness of traditional aerial archaeology. Identified almost 100 years ago, the positive and negative features shown by cropmarks are now well understood, as are the role of the different cultivated plants and the importance of precipitation and other elements of the physical environment. Generations of aer...

The species richness and biodiversity of vegetation in Hungary are increasingly threatened by invasive plant species brought in from other continents and foreign ecosystems. These invasive plant species have spread aggressively in the natural and semi-natural habitats of Europe. Common milkweed (Asclepias syriaca) is one of the species that pose th...

The hypothetical climate change and the stress influences caused by the increasingly frequent found meteorological extremities affect the fertility of soils in even more degree. During our soil-climate sensitivity researches, the expression of the drought sensitivity as a stress influence, evolved as a result of lack of precipitation in soil fertil...

During our soil-specific drought sensitivity research, an aim of ours was to ascertain how drought, a stress factor caused by the lack of precipitation, affects soil fertility. We used the five-year-long (1985–1989) soil and corn yield data of the National Pedological and Crop Production Database (NPCPD). We assigned the annual Pálfai Drought Index...

The past decades have seen rapid advancements in space-based monitoring of essential water cycle variables, providing products related to precipitation, evapotranspiration, and soil moisture, often at tens of kilometer scales. Whilst these data effectively characterize water cycle variability at regional to global scales, they are less suitable for...

Soil is an essential component in the environment and is vital for food security. It provides ecosystem services, filters water, supplies nutrients to plants, provides us with food, stores carbon, regulates greenhouse gas emissions and it affects our climate. Traditional soil survey methodologies are complicated, expensive, and time-consuming. Visi...

Quantification of the spatial and temporal behavior of soil moisture is vital for understanding water availability in agriculture, ecosystems research, river basin hydrology, and water resources management. Unmanned Aerial Systems (UAS) offer great potential in monitoring this parameter at a sub-meter level and at a relatively low cost. The standar...

European ground squirrels (EGS) are members of the soil megafauna and part of the ecosystem engineers that shape physical, chemical, and biological characteristics of soil ecosystems in European grasslands. Thanks to their strict protection their abundance and distribution have been surveyed systematically and annually in Hungary. The results of th...

There is increasing demand for up-to-date spatial information on soil organic carbon (SOC). Meanwhile, Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAV) provide flexible technology for monitoring land surface features with high spatial resolution at plot scale. Suitably performed, airborne imagery simultaneously provides spectral and terrain based spatial auxiliary d...

With the increasing role that unmanned aerial systems (UAS) are playing in data collection for environmental studies, two key challenges relate to harmonizing and providing standardized guidance for data collection, and also establishing protocols that are applicable across a broad range of environments and conditions. In this context, a network of...

At the beginning of 2017, we recognized a large circular structure in a Google Earth satellite image. It was situated west from the village Ligetfalva in a field called Gesztenyési-dűlő in the middle part of County Zala. The structure was clearly visible in the image. The site is located on a southern slope of one of the hills of the Zalapáti Ridge...

IDENTIFICATION AND MONITORING OF ROCK GLACIER UNITS (31°-33°S) ABSTRACT “Monos de Agua” catchment is located at 33°S; 70°16W in the Juncal sub-basin (Central Andes, Chile). In the last 60 years, it lost a 27±3% of glacierized surface. A ratio of covered /uncovered glaciers in the sub-basin is of 24%. Several rock glacier geoforms were mapped and r...

The EU Water-JPI project titled “An integrative information aqueduct to close the gaps between global satellite observation of water cycle and local sustainable management of water resources – iAQUEDUCT” aims primarily at closing the gaps between remote observations of water cycle and local needs of information for sustainable management of water r...

The Földgömb-Atacama Expeditions carried out by the Hungarian Dry Andes Research Programme happen each second year in Chile and focus on to monitor the long-term environmental changes on the field in the Ojos del Salado (6893 m) area, which represents well the high altitude mountain environment in the Dry Andes region. The main aim of the programme...

A talaj szerepe a tájrégészetben-kis reliefű területek roncsolásmentes vizsgálata UAV eszköz segítségével / The roll of the soil in landscape archaeology - non-invasive investigation of low relief areas by UAV device Soil can conserve man made changes and objects even if they've happened or been built several thousands or hundreds years ago. In th...

The abandoned "Fehérkő bánya" ignimbrite quarry in Tar (NE Hungary) is a well-known geolocation for a long time. It was considered as the type locality of the Early Miocene "Middle Rhyolite Tuff Horizon", but later this was revised due to its lithological composition which is similar to younger (Middle Miocene-Langhian) ignimbrites (Harangi et al....

This chapter will be more practical in nature. It will discuss two fields in which UAV-based photogrammetry proves a particularly efficient tool in geographic and architectural surveys. We will also reflect on the expectable accuracy of these relatively low-cost instruments.

Large scale flood control projects were initiated at the beginning of 19th century in former Hungarian Kingdom. Civilian engineers established a new, independent coordinate system for surveying campaigns in the first decade of 19th century centered in Buda (now Bu-dapest). Later, during the 19th century and in the first half of 20th century this pr...

Short presentation about our first results to create paleolandscape for a peat bog in Maramures Mountains, Romania. This slideshow represents the study site, used tools to take high resolution aerial images, processing workflow and as well as the first DEMs.

Gully analysis is always an important question from the aspect of soil erosion and natural hazards. We chose two relatively young gullies with obvious anthropogenic influence (both have missing vegetation either inside the watershed or directly on the surface) and analysed them using a DSM created by stereo-photogrammetry software. The base imag...

The Cassini map series of the 18th century France was geo-referred by other sci-entists several time. Their approach was to define as many control points (GCPs) as possible, to achieve an affordable fit to the modern cartographic products and coordinate systems, however this method claims a huge amount of work during the GCP selection. Here we sugg...

The 19th century and post-World War II decades were the main eras of water controlling in former Hungarian Kingdom and Hungary. Due to those large projects, the number and frequency of big floods were minimized but changes caused several other problems what we have to face off in the present. The main help to understand or highlight the fundamental...

One of the newest and mostly emerging acquisition technologies is the use of small unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) to photogrammetry and remote sensing. Several successful research project or industrial use can be found worldwide (mine investigation, precision agriculture, mapping etc.) but those surveys are focusing mainly on the survey of horizon...

Although people rarely think of relief models when speaking about cartographic products, these artefacts are probably the most impressive way of visualizing landscapes. Unlike traditional maps or globes, most relief models are unique, vulnerable hand-made objects. Digital archiving is an important step in their preservation. There are special tools...

The possible use of free on-line tools for digitizing old relief models Summary: Relief models are peculiar type of cartographic products. These models are usually hand-made or produced in small number of copies, so their digital archiving is very important. There are special tools for this task, but these equipments are rather ex-pensive, and libr...

The 1: 5000 scale Danube maps were surveyed and drawn by the Hungarian civilian hy-drological engineers in 1908. The map sheets show the river and the riverside between Dévény (now Devín, in Slovakia) and Gombos (now Bogojevo, in Serbia). The hydrologi-cal objects of the riverside (banks, sluices), the crossing places (bridges, pontoons and fer-rie...

In the last years the functionality and type of UAV-systems increased fast, but unfortunately these systems are hardly available for researchers in some cases. A simple and low-cost solution was developed to build an autonomous aerial surveying airplane, which can fulfil the necessities (aerial photographs with very-high resolution) of other depart...

The Danube Cadastre map sheets are the derived maps of the Danube Mappation, drawn in the last decades of the 19th century. One Cadastre map consists of four 1 : 3600 scale Mappation sheets. The maps show the Danube river and its riverside from Ver˝ oce to Dunaköml˝ od (both of two in Hungary nowadays). The maps represent the river itself as well a...

The sheets of the Danube Mappation were surveyed between 1823 and 1845, leading by the Management of Water and Construction. The leader-engineers were Mátyás Huszár, Pál Vásárhelyi and finally Ottó Ferenc Hieronymi. It shows the Danube and its riverside very accurately from Dévény (now Devín in Slovakia) to Pétervárad (now Petrovaradin in Serbia)....

In this paper old historical maps and the sheets of the Habsburg Military Surveys are analyzed to distinguish different terrace levels in the Great Hungarian Plain (GHP), and particulary in the Körös/Criş river system. The GHP is located in the Pannonian Basin, in the eastern part of Hungary, which is a very flat area. Prior to the river regulation...

The sheets of the Danube Mappation were surveyed between 1823 and 1845,leading by the Management of Water and Construction. The leader-engineers were Mátyás Huszár, Pál Vásárhelyi and finally Ottó Ferenc Hieronymi. It shows the Danube and its riverside very accurately from Dévény (now Devín in Slovakia) to Pétervárad (now Petrovaradin in Serbia). T...

The map was surveyed between 1823 and 1845. It shows the Danube and its riverside from Dévény (now Devin in Slovakia) to Pétervárad (now Petrovaradin in Serbia). The map was drawn on 28 × 22 Wiener inch sheets of paper. Its scale is 1 Wiener inch to 50 Wiener fathoms that is in metric system 1:3600. So the dimension of one sheet is 1400 × 1100 Wien...

The Great Hungarian Plain (GHP), the central part of the Pannonian Basin, is one of the world's most developed flatlands. The relief differences remain under 20 meters in the central area of the plain, especially in the wide floodplain of the Tisza River. After the flood control measurements of the river (1846-1930), newly built dykes cut the wider...

The map of Lányi is the last map which represents the reach of Tisza in the former Heves and Külso-Szolnok counties in central Hungary, before the river control measures. The map was made by surveying with the leading of Sámuel Lányi, qualified engineer, between 1834 and 1843. This map was the base of the river control guided by Pál Vásárhelyi, whi...