László Pásztor

Institute for Soil Sciences, Centre for Agricultural Research · Department of Soil Mapping and Environmental Informatics

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...

Stakeholders and policymakers have been becoming more and more interested not just in the potential organic carbon (SOC) saturation level of soils but also in spatially explicit information on the degree of SOC deficit, which can support future policy and sustainable management strategies, and carbon sequestration-associated spatial planning. Thus...

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 methodology is presented for the quantitative assessment of soil biomass productivity at 100 m spatial resolution on a national scale. The traditional land evaluation approach-where crop yield is the dependent variable-was followed using measured yield and net primary productivity data derived from satellite images, together with digital soil and...

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 belvíz-veszélyeztetettség alatt azt a valószínűségi változót értjük, ami megadja, hogy adott területen mekkora valószínűséggel következik be a belvízi elöntés. Jelen cikkünkben a területhasználat váltás, a földhasználat racionalizálásának hatásait jelenítjük meg a belvíz-veszélyeztetettség mértékére. A kedvezőtlen vízgazdálkodású területek művelé...

Mapping and assessing ecosystem services (ES) projects at the national level have been implemented recently in the European Union in order to comply with the targets set out in the EU’s Biodiversity Strategy for 2020 and later in the Strategy for 2030. In Hungary this work has just been accomplished in a large-scale six-year project. The Hungarian...

Soil carbon storage results from interactions between ecological processes and contributes to the global chemical regulation of the atmosphere, a vital ecosystem service. Within the ecosystem services approach, measuring soil carbon stock is used as an indicator of landscapes that function as terrestrial carbon sinks and sources. Soil carbon stock...

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...

The warming of the climate and shrinking freshwater resources pose serious challenges to European agriculture. Meeting these challenges demands a thorough knowledge of the major trends in soil moisture patterns across the continent over time. Charting the available soil water (ASW) content (m 3 m-3) derived from the ERA5 Land dataset in grid cells...

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...

Terrestrial biogeochemical models are essential tools to quantify climate–carbon cycle feedback and plant–soil relations from local to global scale. In this study, a theoretical basis is provided for the latest version of the Biome-BGCMuSo biogeochemical model (version 6.2). Biome-BGCMuSo is a branch of the original Biome-BGC model with a large num...

Riverine floods cause increasingly severe damages to human settlements and infrastructure. Ecosystems have a natural capacity to decrease both severity and frequency of floods. Natural flood regulation processes along freshwaters can be attributed to two different mechanisms: flood prevention that takes place in the whole catchment and flood mitiga...

Eutrophication, water quality, and environmental status of lakes is a global issue that depends not only on external loadings from industrial, agricultural, and municipal sources but often also on internal loadings from lake sediments. In the latter case, in addition to the quality and quantity of nutrients stored in sediments, their relative conte...

Terrestrial biogeochemical models are essential tools to quantify climate-carbon cycle feedback and plant-soil relations from local to global scale. In this study, theoretical basis is provided for the latest version of Biome-BGCMuSo biogeochemical model (version 6.2). Biome-BGCMuSo is a branch of the original Biome-BGC model with a large number of...

Many national and international initiatives rely on spatially explicit information on soil organic carbon (SOC) stock change at multiple scales to support policies aiming at land degradation neutrality and climate change mitigation. In this study, we used regression cokriging with random forest and spatial stochastic cosimulation to predict the SOC...

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...

Az ökoszisztéma állapottól a ténylegesen igénybe vett ökoszisztéma-szolgáltatás értékelésig. A közösségi jelentőségű természeti értékek hosszú távú megőrzését és fejlesztését, valamint az EU biológiai sokféleség stratégia 2020 célkitűzéseinek hazai szintű megvalósítását megalapozó stratégiai vizsgálatok projekt, Ökoszisztéma-szolgáltatások projekte...

To support the monitoring and reporting processes during implementation of the Sustainable Development Goals, well-developed, commonly recognized Earth observations and geospatial data, methods, innovations, committed professionals, and strong sustainability policies are necessary. This article informs the readers on the Earth observation and geoin...

Gridded model assessments require at least one climatic and one soil database for carrying out the simulations. There are several parallel soil and climate database development projects that provide sufficient, albeit considerably different, observation based input data for crop model based impact studies. The input database related uncertainty of...

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...

Land refers to the planet’s surface not covered by seas, lakes or rivers, but by different types of vegetation (e [...]

The Nitrates Directive aims (a) to protect water quality across Europe from nitrates originating from agricultural sources that pollute ground and surface water, and (b) to promote good farming practices. One of the most controversial measures of the directive is the winter prohibition period of fertilization, which has been extended by a month in...

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...

Recently, the Global Map of Salt-affected Soils (GSSmap) was launched, which pursued a country-driven approach and aimed to update the global and country-level information on salt-affected soils (SAS). The aim of this paper was to present how Hungary contributed to GSSmap by preparing its own SAS maps using advanced digital soil mapping techniques....

As soil erosion is still a global threat to soil resources, the estimation of soil loss, particularly at a spatiotemporal setting, is still an existing challenge. The primary aim of our study is the assessment of changes in soil erosion potential in Hungary from 1990 to 2018, induced by the changes in land use and land cover based on CORINE Land Co...

We propose a method based on multilayered mapping for investigating the current problems of people who live in drylands and we urge decision-makers to support such studies to establish the foundations for future decisive and preventive actions. This paper contains an expandable compilation of the environmental indicators (mostly mappable) that may...

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...

Inland excess water is temporary water inundation that occurs in flat-lands due to both precipitation and groundwater emerging on the surface as substantial sources. Inland excess water is an interrelated natural and human induced land degradation phenomenon, which causes several problems in the flat-land regions of Hungary covering nearly half of...

The GlobalSoilMap initiative significantly inspired the DOSoReMI.hu (Digital, Optimized, Soil Related Maps and Information in Hungary) project, which was started intentionally for the renewal of the national spatial soil data infrastructure in Hungary. The main objectives of our work has been to broaden the possibilities, how demands on spatial soi...

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...

For developing global strategies against the dramatic spread of invasive species, we need to identify the geographical, environmental, and socioeconomic factors determining the spatial distribution of invasive species. In our study, we investigated these factors influencing the occurrences of common milkweed (Asclepias syriaca L.), an invasive plan...

We compiled maps for the topsoil (0-30 cm) organic carbon (SOC) stock and its prediction uncertainty in Hungary at 100 m resolution for the years 1992 and 2010 using a machine learning algorithm, namely, quantile regression forest. 10-fold cross-validation was used for checking the accuracy of the spatial predictions and uncertainty quantifications...

Purpose We conducted this project to develop a feasible method for mapping tropical peat lands of Bengkalis Island—as a test site—in Indonesia. Materials and methods The method based on limited availability of field measurements and a wide range of remotely sensed spatial datasets like radar elevation product, MODIS, and Landsat imageries. We appl...

Wind erosion is one of the most important land degradation processes in Hungary in the areas with low yearly precipitation values. The total land area suffering from wind erosion is approximately 10,000 km2, 10 per cent of the country area. Observations and discussions on wind erosion and its negative impacts in Hungary started in the last century....

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...

Optimal water supply of plants is key to high yields. However, irrigation in drier regions must be accompanied by soil conservation. Nationwide planning of irrigation needs spatially exhaustive, functional soil maps, which may support proper recommendations for the different areas. For supporting the Hungarian national irrigation strategy, a series...

Spatial 3-D information on soil hydraulic properties for areas larger than plot scale is usually derived using indirect methods such as pedotransfer functions (PTFs) due to the lack of measured information on them. PTFs describe the relationship between the desired soil hydraulic parameter and easily available soil properties based on a soil hydrau...

We compared the suitability of several commonly applied digital soil mapping (DSM) techniques to quantify uncertainty with regards to a survey of soil organic carbon stock (SOCS) in Hungary. To represent the wide range of DSM techniques fairly, the followings were selected: universal kriging (UK), sequential Gaussian simulation (SGS), random forest...

Spatial 3D information on soil hydraulic properties for areas larger than plot scale are usually derived with indirect methods due to lacking measured information on those. Soil hydraulic properties are calculated with applying pedotransfer functions (PTFs) – which describe the relationship between the desired soil hydraulic parameter and easily av...

Inland excess water (IEW) is a form of surplus surface water, often regarded as a specific flood type. However, it occurs most frequently in local depressions of large flat areas, irrespective of river floods and the surface water networks. IEW is considered to be a typical Carpathian Basin problem, as it can cause major land degradation problems i...

• Maps of physical soil properties were compiled for differing layer depth distribution. • Synthetized maps were aggregated of maps created for standard depth layers. • Directly compiled and synthetized maps were compared by various tools. • Differences and similarities of the two types of prediction were identified. • Conclusions were drawn on pos...

The history of the research of Debrecen scholars on salt-affected soils of Hortobágy and the region is very rich and diverse. Focusing on mapping, the following stages can be distinguished, indicating the completeness of the maps and the purpose of the performed work− First, quantitative maps (Arany, 1926) for the utilization of the lands at 1:75,0...

The DOSoReMI.hu (Digital, Optimized, Soil Related Maps and Information in Hungary) project was started intentionally for the renewal of the national soil spatial infrastructure in Hungary partly inspired by GSM.net initiative. During our activities we have significantly extended the potential, how soil information requirements could be satisfied. S...

Dairy farming is one the most important sectors of United Kingdom (UK) agriculture. It faces major challenges due to climate change, which will have direct impacts on dairy cows as a result of heat stress. In the absence of adaptations, this could potentially lead to considerable milk loss. Using an 11-member climate projection ensemble, as well as...

Milk loss estimation methods used in the study. (DOCX)

A dataset of annual freshwater ice phenology was compiled for the largest river (Danube) and the largest lake (Lake Balaton) in eastern–central Europe, extending regular river and lake ice monitoring data through the use of historical observations and documentary records dating back to AD 1774 and AD 1885, respectively. What becomes clear is that t...

Over the last decades extensive work has been done on sampling optimization. Many of the related papers focused on the optimization of sampling for only one soil property. However, there is a necessity to prepare a sampling strategy which is optimized for multivariate digital soil mapping (DSM) purposes. The aim of our work was to elaborate a sampl...

Soil erosion by water is one of the most significant forms of soil degradation not just globally, but also in Europe. A new soil erosion risk map of Hungary has been compiled and published recently, using the combined outputs of the USLE and PESERA models. Our study aimed at providing evaluation of the map by using semi-quantitative validation data...

Legacy soil data have been produced over 70 years in nearly all countries of the world. Unfortunately, data, information and knowledge are still currently fragmented and at risk of getting lost if they remain in a paper format. To process this legacy data into consistent, spatially explicit and continuous global soil information, data are being res...

A data set of annual freshwater ice phenology was compiled for the largest river (Danube) and the largest lake (Lake Balaton) in East Central Europe, extending regular river and lake ice monitoring data through the use of historical observations and documentary records dating back to 1774 AD and 1885 AD, respectively. What becomes clear is that the...

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...

The DOSoReMI.hu (Digital, Optimized, Soil Related Maps and Information in Hungary) project was started intentionally for the renewal of the national spatial soil infrastructure in Hungary partly inspired by GlobalSoilMap (GSM) initiative. During our activities we have significantly extended the potential, how soil information requirements could be...

Traditionally in Hungary the soil cover under agricultural and forestry management is typically characterized independently and just approximately identically. Soil data collection is carried out and the databases of soil features are managed irrespectively. As a consequence, nationwide soil maps cannot be considered homogeneously predictive for so...

We provide an overview of the main features of the LUCAS topsoil survey of the EU in comparison to the GEMAS survey. In addition we describe the policy requirements and scientific principles of soil monitoring programs.