About
85
Publications
52,717
Reads
How we measure 'reads'
A 'read' is counted each time someone views a publication summary (such as the title, abstract, and list of authors), clicks on a figure, or views or downloads the full-text. Learn more
3,367
Citations
Introduction
Kinga currently works at the Department of Ecology, Taxonomy and Nature Conservation, Institute of Biology Bucharest, Romanian Academy and the Centre for Ecological Research, Hungary. Kinga does research in ecology and botany, with focus on grazing, land use history, traditional ecological knowledge, biodiversity.
Additional affiliations
December 2016 - present
HUN-REN Centre for Ecological Research
Position
- research fellow
Publications
Publications (85)
The Breite Ancient Oaks Tree Reserve near to Sighişoara (Schäßburg, Romania) is probably one of the best preserved wood-pastures in Central-East Europe. Although it is renowned mostly for its veteran oaks, the herbaceous vegetation is also of conservation interest, increasing the biodiversity of the site. The paper aims to describe the current grou...
Wood-pastures are important elements of the European natural and cultural heritage, fulfilling several ecological functions at local and landscape scale (e.g. providing a valuable habitat for a wide range of species, as well as a link to traditional landscape management practices), but are nowadays in decline especially due to land-use changes begu...
Introduction
Wood-pastures developed in many areas of Europe as a shared community resource under the governance of local institutions (for example Vera, 2000; Chételat et al., 2013; see also Bieling and Konold, this volume). While such communal governance systems have largely disappeared in northern and western Europe, they remain widespread in Ro...
Large herbivores have a keystone role in many forest ecosystems. There is widespread recognition that undesirable changes may be caused by the complete removal of grazing-related disturbances, whereas there can be benefits from properly managed, targeted livestock grazing, both from a forest management and biodiversity perspectives. However, there...
Ecosystems and landscapes shaped by the intricate relationship between people and their natural environment embody the impact of many different past land‐use practices and historical events. However, in some regions, classical historical records of landscape change do not exist or are insufficiently detailed. Local communities' ecological memory ca...
Evidence‐based conservation can benefit substantially from multiple knowledge sources and different knowledge systems. While traditional ecological knowledge (TEK) and collaborative research are increasingly acknowledged, detailed cross‐knowledge system reviews are scarce and their methodology underdeveloped. We have two objectives: to prepare such...
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...
Indigenous and traditional practices based on ethnoecological knowledge are fundamental to biodiversity stewardship and sustainable use.
Knowledge partnerships between Indigenous Peoples, traditional local communities, and ecologists can produce richer and fairer understandings of nature.
We identify key topical areas where such collaborations can...
Agriculture needs to be fundamentally transformed to be able to live up to and achieve Sustainable Development Goals and thereby improve its contribution to human well-being, as its outputs recently crossed global and European planetary boundaries. Reducing the use of agrochemicals by 75–86%, restoring 2/3 of the land to biodiversity rich habitats...
Here we provide the ‘Global Spectrum of Plant Form and Function Dataset’, containing species mean values for six vascular plant traits. Together, these traits –plant height, stem specific density, leaf area, leaf mass per area, leaf nitrogen content per dry mass, and diaspore (seed or spore) mass – define the primary axes of variation in plant form...
Despite deforestation taking place globally, forest cover is increasing in many European landscapes. This increase, however, resulting from plantations and spontaneous forest regrowth, may obscure the generally declining trend of semi-natural forests, though the latter are essential for local and landscape-level conservation strategies and sustaina...
Human impacts on the Earth’s biosphere are driving the global biodiversity crisis. Governments are preparing to agree on a set of actions intended to halt the loss of biodiversity and put it on a path to recovery by 2050. We provide evidence that the proposed actions can bend the curve for biodiversity, but only if these actions are implemented urg...
EXPERT INPUT TO THE POST-2020 GLOBAL BIODIVERSITY FRAMEWORK:
TRANSFORMATIVE ACTIONS ON ALL DRIVERS OF BIODIVERSITY LOSS ARE
URGENTLY REQUIRED TO ACHIEVE THE GLOBAL GOALS BY 2050
Background
Traditional knowledge is key for sustainability, but it is rapidly disappearing. Pig keeping in forests and marshes is an ancient, once widespread, now vanishing practice, with a major economic and ecological potential. The knowledge of pig keepers and the foraging activity of pigs are hardly documented.
Methods
We studied the knowledge...
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...
Previous studies found that pedunculate oak, one of the most widespread and abundant species in European deciduous forests, regenerates in open habitats and forest edges, but not in closed forest interiors. However, these observations usually come from the core areas of the biome, and much less is known about such processes at its arid boundary, wh...
A tölgylisztharmat (Erisyphe spp.) a tölgyek (különösen a kocsányos tölgy) erdész szakma által jól ismert kórokozója. Az európai növénykórtan és erdészettudomány is hatalmas tudást halmozott már fel arról, hogy milyen károkat képes okozni csemetekertekben, tarvágás vagy fokozatos felújító vágást követõ felújításokban, pótlá-
sokban vagy éppen fiata...
Despite the growing list of elements assessed and recognised as environmental and human health hazards, pollution monitoring and mitigation strategies are mandatory only for a limited number of metals, for which ambient air quality limits are defined by national and international policies. In order to overcome this deficiency, and promote cost-effe...
Introduced pathogen microorganisms are important drivers of ecosystem change. This paper highlights the impact of the non-native pathogen mildew multi-species complex on the natural regeneration dynamics of pedunculate oak (Quercus robur). Pedunculate oak is a European keystone tree species, hosting a great amount of biodiversity, but its future ro...
Habitats associated with oak may host high insect diversity, especially saproxylic species, due to the availability of specific microhabitats such as dead wood, rotten logs and woody debris. Among the insects occurring in such habitats, ants play a major role in forest ecosystems as generalist predators. Ant assemblages were investigated using diff...
Background
Forests have been grazed for millennia. Around the world, forest grazing by livestock became a controversial management practice, gradually restricted in many countries over the past 250 years. This was also the case in most Central and Eastern European countries, including Hungary, where forest grazing was a legally prohibited activity...
Wetland grazing by livestock, once widespread throughout Europe, is increasingly used in conservation management. To avoid conflicts and enable cooperation between wetland users and conservationists, habitat quality indicators relevant to both stakeholder groups would be useful. We aimed to identify which indicators of grazed wetland habitat qualit...
Temperate deciduous forests dominated by oaks cover extensive areas in European lowlands. These ecosystems have been under intense anthropogenic use for millennia, thus their natural dynamics, and their regeneration in particular, is still not well understood. Previous studies found that pedunculate oak ( Quercus robur ), one of the most widespread...
Plant traits—the morphological, anatomical, physiological, biochemical and phenological characteristics of plants—determine how plants respond to environmental factors, affect other trophic levels, and influence ecosystem properties and their benefits and detriments to people. Plant trait data thus represent the basis for a vast area of research sp...
A Biológiai Sokféleség és az Ökoszisztéma-szolgáltatások Globális Értékelő Tanulmánya, amelyet az ENSZ Biológiai Sokféleség és Ökoszisztéma-szolgáltatás Kormányközi Testülete (IPBES) jelentetett meg 2019 májusában, elismerte, hogy a természet védelme hatékonyabbá válhat a hagyományos, bennszülött és helyi tudás bevonásával, illetve ezen tudás birto...
The Global Assessment on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services released in May 2019 by the United Nations' Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) acknowledged that nature conservation could become more efficient with the inclusion of traditional, indigenous and local knowledge, and the participation o...
Hay-making structures are part of the agricultural landscape of meadows and pastures. Hay meadows are still used and found all over Europe, but their distribution patterns as well as their characteristics and regional features depend on geographical area, climate, culture, and intensity of agriculture. Intensively used hay meadows are the most domi...
As airborne pollution is recognised as the single largest environmental health hazard in Europe, the necessity to develop effective systems for monitoring and reducing the level of air pollutants, becomes imperative. The paper describes a tested and implemented long-term biomonitoring system for airborne heavy metals at a national scale. Moss bags...
Questions
What is the functional trait variation of European temperate grasslands and how does this reflect global patterns of plant form and function? Do habitat specialists show trait differentiation across habitat types?
Location
Europe.
Methods
We compiled 18 regeneration and non‐regeneration traits for a continental species pool consisting o...
Semi-open oak woods and solitary oaks commonly dominate the wooded fabric (i.e. the ‘oakscape’) of European traditional rural agricultural landscapes based on
animal husbandry. However, modern land use systems fail to perpetuate oakscapes, posing a serious threat to biodiversity conservation and the associated diversity
of ecosystem services. Recon...
Wetlands are fragile, dynamic systems, transient at larger temporal scales and strongly affected by long-term human activities. Sustaining at least some aspects of human management, particularly traditional grazing, would be especially important as a way of maintaining the “necessary” disturbances for many endangered species. Traditional ecological...
Indigenous Peoples and Local Communities (IPLC) are affected by global environmental change because they directly rely on their immediate environment for meeting basic livelihood needs. Therefore, safeguarding and restoring ecosystem resilience is critical to support their wellbeing. Based on examples from the literature, we illustrate how IPLC par...
Wood‐pastures are among the oldest traditional management systems, being nowadays increasingly valued for their characteristic biodiversity and as living documents of land-use and cultural history. Much less acknowledged than those from Central and Western Europe, large wood-pastures are found also in Romania, being relatively common especially in...
There are diverse ways how Indigenous Peoples and Local Communities (IPLC) contribute to the co-production, maintenance and protection of biodiversity and thus foster the achievement of many of the Aichi Targets. IPLC often ‘contribute’ to nature by co-producing genetic diversity, species and ecosystem diversity through ‘accompanying’ natural proce...
Context
Intensification and specialisation of agriculture and forest use has led to profound structural and compositional changes in European landscapes. In particular, sharp, narrow edges adjacent to relatively homogenous vegetation types progressively replace transitional habitats, crucial for a plethora of species and ecological processes. Querc...
This report describes the Romanian Grassland Database (RGD), registered under EU-RO-008 in the Global Index of Vegetation-Plot Databases (GIVD). This collaborative initiative aims at collecting all available vegetation-plot data (relevés) of grasslands and other open habitats from the territory of Romania and providing them for science, nationally...
Biomonitoring, i.e. using plant species for measuring pollution levels, has been previously explored in several locations using various protocols and organisms in the search for effective strategies and practices for monitoring and reducing the levels of pollution.
Here we present a tested and functional cost-effective method of using the foliar ac...
From the Neolithic times, grazing by large domestic herbivores has had a significant impact on European forests, but the issue of the real impact of this disturbance continues to imply several questions. Diversification of disturbances, including the reintroduction of some “traditional”/ “historical” disturbances in collaboration with local knowled...
Hay is still a fundamental resource for many Central and Eastern European traditional rural communities, as this is the only type of fodder used in winter time for the indoor feeding of livestock animals. To explore its current relevance for local communities, we conducted research in Ieud village, Maramureș county, in Northern Romania. The fourtee...
The book “Ahogy gondozza, úgy veszi hasznát” [“As He Tends It, so He Makes Use of It”] Traditional Ecological Knowledge and Land Use in Gyimes (Eastern Carpathians) meets the increasing expectation of studying traditional ecological knowledge, by documenting the local, deep knowledge of the Hungarian-speaking Csángó [Tsango] ethnics (ceangai in Rom...
In completion of the previous research on the flora and vegetation, this study aims to present in detail the 17 plant associations identified in the Breite wood-pasture. The ecological characteristics of the ground vegetation are discussed in relation with the humidity regime, abandonment of traditional grazing and mowing, and the ongoing secondary...
Traditional management systems continue to play a decisive role in creating and maintaining semi-natural habitats of high nature value in several cultural landscapes throughout Europe, including Transylvania, Romania. Such systems are mainly the outcome of fine-tuned human activity, their outstanding biodiversity being the result of historical unin...
Large, old trees are keystone ecological structures, their decline having disproportional ecological consequences. There is virtually no information available regarding the status and occurrence of old trees in traditional cultural landscapes from Eastern Europe. In this study, we explore the environmental determinants of the old oaks found in wood...
In a time when environmental responsibility is increasingly discussed, with several legal initiatives and a great variety of civic movements, the understanding of environmental problems, together with the capacity and willingness to solve them is gaining more importance. The means of getting acquainted with and learning about these issues are diver...
The vegetation season in 2015 began without one of its leading and dedicated researchers, phytosociologist Vasile Sanda.
Vasile Sanda devoted his life to phytosociology, the analysis and mapping of the flora, and his name marked the study of the plant communities from Romania over five decades.
He is the leading author or co-author of over 330 sc...
Land-use change is one of the major drivers of global biodiversity loss, its study experiencing continuous development and increasing recognition, influencing main research directions within ecology. Many studies target the negative aspect; however, the modification of the natural environment over centuries and millennia led to the biodiversity, in...
Synthetic scale corrosion inhibitors used in closed loop thermal systems, but especially in open systems, accumulate in nature. Recently, a number of studies have been published concerning the possibilities of using natural plant extracts for the inhibition of corrosion and scale formation. In this idea, the paper presents the results of microbiolo...
The Breite wood-pasture located on a plateau nearby Sighişoara (Schäßburg, Romania) is
considered one of the most representative sites for this type of habitat in Central-Eastern Europe. As a result
of the field study begun in 2005, a list of 476 vascular plant species and subspecies is provided together with
considerations on their ecology, and a...
Ecological education, like the basic education from which it derives, is a field experiencing continuous transformation, requiring on-going clarification. Its main aim is to help people to acquire knowledge, think about environmental issues, and have direct experiences in the natural environment. This knowledge implies more than an accumulation of...
In this paper we present data relating to nest density and habitat use by the Lesser Grey Shrike Lanius minor in the Târnava Mare Valley, Romania, using both nesting tree parameters (microhabitat), and habitat parameters measured in a 100m radius around each nest. The density of nests was 0.96 per km². Average distance between nests was 768.4m. Mos...
Spatial models are increasingly employed to help understand the distribution of organisms and establish conservation priorities. Classic patch-orientated models may have limited power to accurately predict the organisms' distributions. Pond breeding amphibians are appropriate study organisms because of their complex life cycle, low dispersal and se...
This paper describes observed patterns of habitat occupancy in breeding passerines in burned and unburned reed-beds during two periods of their reproductive season (May and June). In burned areas only two species, Acrocephalus palustris and Saxicola torquata, exhibited differences in habitat occupancy between the two study periods. The differences...
Singing corncrake males were surveyed in the Saxon landscapes of southern Transylvania, Romania. We found 132 singing males, meaning an average density of 0.77 males/km2. Most singing males were detected in reed mixed with weeds (52.52%), followed by mesophilous or mesohygrophilous meadows (32.32%), and in a much smaller number in cropland (8.08% i...
In the era of global land-use change, the cultural landscapes of Europe – including wood-pastures – and their characteristic biodiversity developed following a long tradition of land-use are receiving a continuously growing attention, highlighting the conservation importance of maintaining traditional practices and knowledge. Although there are clo...
A massive decline of biodiversity is caused by land-use changes. Efforts must therefore be made to better understand the factors that govern organismal distribution, especially for countries where traditional management is about to be intensified such as in Romania. We here document the spatial distribution of amphibians from a Romanian rural lands...
Habitat‐based inventories provide critical reference data that are essential to track changes in amphibian communities and their habitats. We present the results of a pond inventory in a cultural landscape from central Romania. The presence/absence of amphibians was assessed through multiple‐year surveys during the breeding season and larval develo...
The aim of this study is to compare the feeding habitat use by
passage and breeding waterbirds in the fishponds from Brădeni. The average number
of species in autumn was found to be smaller than in spring. However, although in
autumn we couldn’t detect significant differences regarding the average number of
species for the four ponds, in spring the...
Ancient wood-pastures are facing a major decline in several European countries. These habitats are of great importance for
biodiversity because of their special semi-natural character that increases landscape variability and connectivity. In this
paper we examine the habitat preferences of the tree pipit Anthus trivialis in an ancient oak wood-past...
The importance of understanding and maintaining traditional land-use practices is gaining attention
following the transformation of agricultural landscapes. These changes have caused the
disappearance of cultural values and biodiversity losses in large areas. With the aim to slow and
reverse this trend, researchers and managers tend to search for h...
Species mapping requires sustained effort and collaboration of several researchers in order to provide the background information that is later simplified and transposed visually in the form of distribution maps. The advantage of such maps is the accessibility of the data for professionals involved in the different aspects of nature conservation an...
There is an increasing interest among ecologists and conservation managers in exploring the factors that influence the distribution and persistence of natural populations. In order to correctly assess the conservation status of a species, both local and landscape level studies are needed. Moreover, the temporal change in the habitat occupancy shoul...
Here we present the results of the first extensive Transylvanian road mortality survey of Bufo bufo and Rana dalmatina. Fieldwork was carried out between February 15 and May 03, 2007 in the middle section of the Târnava Mare basin. In a total of seventeen surveys in 2007 altogether 83.3 km of roads were repeatedly investigated. 1437 R. dalmatina, 8...
Amphibians are good indicators of human impact, declining steadily worldwide. We explored the relationships between the ponds and nearby landscape parameters and population size of the Agile Frog (Rana dalmatina), estimated from the number of egg masses, in a cultural landscape within the central section of Târnava Mare Basin, Romania. Forty-three...
Summary Ecologists often use binary data to estimate the habitat use, turnover and distribution of species and populations. The basic assumption in these stud - ies is that the individuals are perfectly detected. However, only a few stud- ies account for the detectability of the target organisms in various habitats. Not accounting for detection pro...
The Breite wood pasture is a natural reserve included in the Sighişoara-Târnava-Mare pSCI and pSPA sites, situated on a 500 m elevation plateau near Sighişoara (Transylvania). Besides its characteristic vegetation, the Breite is also an important habitat for several species of community interest. The scattered multi-secular oaks originate from the...
Landscape ecology is a relatively new and continuously developing field of ecology, whose primary focus is the spatial and temporal heterogeneity of the environment and ecological processes. It has been widely adopted by animal ecologists as well. In this paper we present arguments regarding the need of including the landscape ecological approaches...
The primary anthropogenic factor causing amphibian declines in Europe is habitat loss and fragmentation. Here we explore the effects of aquatic and landscape habitat variables on the adult counts of the Common Toad (Bufo bufo) in 43 ponds in central Romania surveyed between 2000 and 2005. Principal components analysis (PCA) identified two main fact...
We present the importance of flooded area size for avifauna feeding in a temporary wetland formed by the spring flooding of a brook. There was a significant difference in the number of recorded species when over 90% of the area was flooded, compared to the species number at 30% flooded area. While changes occurred in the size of the flooded area, t...
Since the appearance in 1934 of the book Studii fitocenologice în Munții Retezatului (Phytocoenological studies in the Retezat Mountains), in which the author Alexandru Borza defined plant associations as being “characterized by a combination of certain constant characteristic species, conditioned by the presence of the same stationary factors” and...
In order to verify the exploitation safety of cables afferent to the underground power lines the biodegradability of polyvinyl chloride (PVC) was experimentally determined. The PVC cover from which the protecting layer of medium voltage cables is made was exposed to the action of several species fungi. The degradation causes of the dielectric rigid...
Fish introductions are considered one of the most widespread anthropogenic threats to aquatic ecosystems. Their negative impact
on native amphibian communities has received increasing attention in recent years. We investigated the relationship between
the introduced fish, emergent vegetation cover and native amphibians in man-made ponds generated b...
In order to verify the exploitation safety of cables afferent to the underground power lines, the biodegradability of polyvinyl chloride (PVC) was experimentally determined. The PVC cover from which the protecting layer of medium voltage cables is made was exposed to the action of several fungi species. The degradation causes of the dielectric rigi...