Péter Török

• Ph.D., D.Sc.
• Professor (Full) at University of Debrecen

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...

Grasslands used to be vital landscape elements throughout Europe. Nowadays, the area of grasslands is dramatically reduced, especially in industrial countries. Grassland restoration is widely applied to increase the naturalness of the landscape and preserve biodiversity. We reviewed the most frequently used restoration techniques (spontaneous succe...

This article introduces a Special Issue on biodiversity of Palaearctic grasslands and provides a synthesis of the current knowledge on this topic. Four major categories of grasslands can be distinguished in the Palaearctic biogeographic realm: (a) zonal steppes (in areas too dry for forests), (b) arctic-alpine grasslands (in areas too cold for fore...

The Palearctic steppe biome ranges from the Mediterranean basin towards China, forming one of the largest continuous terrestrial biomes. The literature on steppe ecology and conservation is vast but scattered and often not available in English. We provide a review of some key topics based on a new definition of steppes, which includes also Mediterr...

In biodiversity conservation of agriculture-driven landscapes, grasslands have an outstanding importance; their conservation became a top priority both in research and practice. In many regions, sheep or cattle grazing are the best options for biodiversity conservation. In our study, we compared the effects of cattle and sheep grazing on short-gras...

Question Native and invasive species interact simultaneously with each other and with their species‐specific soil biota, yet the relative importance of native plant–soil feedback (PSF) on the outcome of competition between these species with different origins is poorly understood. Therefore, we studied the influence of native PSF on the performance...

Background and Aims Knowledge on seed persistence is vital from both theoretical and practical considerations but directly collecting seed persistence data for many species is rather unfeasible. Therefore, there is a need to identify traits that can predict seed persistence, but studies about the effects of seed size and shape on persistence yielde...

Anthropogenic biodiversity decline threatens the functioning of ecosystems and the many benefits they provide to humanity¹. As well as causing species losses in directly affected locations, human influence might also reduce biodiversity in relatively unmodified vegetation if far-reaching anthropogenic effects trigger local extinctions and hinder re...

Aims Climate change is expected to bolster opportunities for alien species' establishment and spread. In Europe, alien C4 grass species have the potential to benefit from a changing climate, being better adapted to higher temperatures and heat stress. Our aim was to compile an up‐to‐date inventory of alien C4 grass species in Europe, to find inform...

With the Research Topic “Origin, Conservation, and Restoration of the Threatened European Grassland Ecosystem in the Anthropocene”, we set the stage for a journey through the nuanced landscapes of European grasslands, offering an overview of recent scientific endeavors and a call to action for the preservation and restoration of these unique ecosys...

With the Research Topic “Origin, Conservation, and Restoration of the Threatened European Grassland Ecosystem in the Anthropocene”, we set the stage for a journey through the nuanced landscapes of European grasslands, offering an overview of recent scientific endeavors and a call to action for the preservation and restoration of these unique ecosys...

Trait-based ecology considerably increased our comprehension of various fields related to ecology and evolution. As measuring traits can be time-consuming and costly, analyses regularly gather trait data from databases instead of carrying out new measurements. However, intraspecific trait variability can cause considerable differences between the t...

The growing global horticultural trade is having a steadily increasing impact on the rate at which alien species are introduced into new areas, partly because horticultural trade also entails the unintentional dispersal of many contaminant species. Although there are reports about noteworthy occurrences of alien plant species in garden centres, thi...

In the Eurasian forest-steppe, with increasing aridity, the balance between naturally co-existing forest and grassland patches is expected to shift towards grassland dominance in the long run, although feedback mechanisms and changes in land-use may alter this process. In this study, we compared old and recent aerial photographs of Hungarian forest...

We selected 15 sheep‐grazed sand pastures along a gradient of increasing grazing intensity to study the fine‐scale patterns of main biomass fractions (green biomass, litter) and that of plant species and functional groups (life forms and social behaviour types). We classified them into five grazing intensity levels based on stocking density, proxim...

Repeated surveys of vegetation plots offer a viable tool to detect fine‐scale responses of vegetation to environmental changes. In this study, our aim was to explore how the species composition and species richness of dry grasslands changed over a period of 17 years, how these changes relate to environmental changes and how the presence of spring e...

Accurate information regarding tree canopy characteristics is crucial for forest management, but it is often difficult to assess. This study presents an innovative framework designed for crown base height (CBH) detection using high-resolution laser-scanned data, with a specific focus on individual trees within forests. The framework comprises three...

Studying the relationship between biodiversity patterns and processes in vegetation has been at the centre of interest in vegetation ecology for several decades. By studying the biomass of loess and alkaline grasslands along a water and salinity gradient, we aimed to analyse species diversity and Grime’s competitor-stress tolerator-ruderal (CSR) fu...

The soil seed bank (SSB) and soil microbial communities are among the most crucial drivers of belowground biodiversity in grasslands. Changes in components of soil biodiversity following protection from grazing were observed in cold, semiarid grasslands. To study these changes, soil samples were taken in an intensively grazed area and in an exclosu...

In many regions, wild large herbivores have maintained open landscapes up to and including historic times, but, more recently, have been largely replaced by domestic livestock. By employing extensive and traditional grazing and browsing regimes, conservation actions support biodiversity and recovery in natural and degraded areas. However, grazing a...

Global warming, elevated atmospheric CO2 concentrations and increased likeliness of extreme drought and wildfires in many regions will likely favour C4 grass species. To support future management actions, we explored the effect of the encroachment of an invasive perennial C4 grass, Sporobolus cryptandrus on the composition of soil seed banks in dry...

In the past decade, the use of three-dimensional forest information from airborne Light Detection and Ranging (LiDAR) has become widespread in forest inventories. Accurate Individual Treetop Detection (ITD) and crown boundary delineation using LiDAR data are critical for obtaining precise inventory metrics. To address this need, we introduced a nov...

Common milkweed (Asclepias syriaca L.) is a widespread invasive alien forb in dry sandy habitats of Central Europe. It adversely affects native plant and animal communities, but its ecosystem-level effects, particularly on hydrology, are little known. Since milkweed has an extensive, deep root system and large, broad leaves, we assumed a negative e...

Understanding the responses of vegetation to grazing exclusion along a salinity gradient is useful for the management of grasslands. We studied the responses of vegetation to grazing removal (ungrazed areas) in three semiarid regions with different soil salinity levels: non-saline, moderately saline and hyper-saline. The results showed that Bray-Cu...

We selected 15 sheep-grazed sand pastures along increasing grazing intensity to study fine scale biomass patterns of main fractions (green biomass, litter) and that of plant species and functional groups (life forms and social behaviour types). We classified them into five grazing intensity levels based on stocking rate, proximity to drinking and r...

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...

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...

The existing plant trait databases’ applicability is limited for studies dealing with the flora and vegetation of the eastern and central part of Europe and for large-scale comparisons across regions, mostly because their geographical data coverage is limited and they incorporate records from several different sources, often from regions with marke...

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...

Widespread campaigns on forest restoration and various tree planting actions lower the awareness of the importance of grasslands for carbon sequestration or biodiversity conservation. Even lower attention is given to the conservation of biodiversity and ecosystem functioning in remnants of ancient, so called old-growth grasslands. Old-growth grassl...

Studying the relationship between biodiversity patterns and processes in vegetation has been at the centre of interest in vegetation ecology for several decades. By studying the biomass of loess and alkaline grasslands along a water and salinity gradient, we aimed to analyse species diversity and CSR functional type patterns. We aimed to test the f...

Although edges are usually considered key areas for biodiversity, previous studies have focused on anthropogenic edges, usually studied edges in relation to forest interiors (disregarding the adjacent non-woody vegetation), and used simple taxonomic indices (without considering functional or phylogenetic aspects). We studied the species composition...

Diverse macrovegetation can provide heterogeneous habitats for benthic diatoms. The removal of macrophytes as direct plant control, however, can be considered as a threat, which can even lead to remarkable microhabitat alterations. Lake Tisza (Hungary) has a high nature conservation value, but it is also an important recreation centre, which is why...

Renewable energy production is gaining momentum globally as a way to combat climate change without drastically reducing human energy consumption. Solar energy offers the fastest developing solution. However, ground-mounted solar panels have a high land requirement, which leads to conflicts with other land use types, particularly agriculture and bio...

The mixing regime, the spatial distribution of nutrients and light determine the distribution of phytoplankton in lakes to a large extent. Linear stratification is a unique phenomenon among the various forms the lakes can stratify, representing a continuous and gradual water temperature decrease with depth. Here, we aimed to understand how mixing,...

Grasslands are ubiquitous globally, and their conservation and restoration are critical to combat both the biodiversity and climate crises. There is increasing interest in implementing effective multifunctional grassland restoration to restore biodiversity concomitant with above- and belowground carbon sequestration, delivery of carbon credits and/...

Global warming, elevated atmospheric CO concentrations, and increased likeliness of extreme drought and wildfires in many regions will likely favour C4 grass species. We explored the effect of the encroachment of an invasive perennial C4 grass, Sporobolus cryptandrus on the composition of soil seed banks in dry sand grasslands in Central Europe. In...

Garlic pennycress ( Mummenhoffia alliacea ) is a rare weed of the Brassicaceae family, protected in Hungary. In 2021, three new sites of the species were discovered. In addition to these previously unknown occurrences, a detailed study of a roadside occurrence known for a longer time but not yet published was carried out. Main aim of our study was...

Question Semi‐natural grasslands (SNG) are important for maintaining biodiversity and ecological processes in farmland. Current pasture‐based livestock production mainly occurs on intensified grasslands (IG) that have been agronomically improved. Although it is documented that SNG and IG differ in terms of plant diversity, their ability to provide...

Aims By analysing cattle‐ and sheep‐grazed sand grasslands, we tested the following hypotheses: (i) livestock type has a stronger effect on the vegetation characteristics than grazing intensity; (ii) sheep grazing results in lower biomass and species and functional diversity than cattle grazing, regardless of intensity; and (iii) increased grazing...

One of the most important and most easily measurable physical characteristics of plant seeds is their weight, which influences and indicates crucial ecological processes. Seed weight affects spatial and temporal dispersibility, and can also influence seed predation and the germination, growth and survival of seedlings. Providing trait data for spec...

Scattered trees in wood-pastures represent outstanding conservation value by providing microhabitats for a variety of organisms. They also diversify ecosystem services by creating shade for livestock, and capturing and storing carbon. However, trees in wood-pastures are declining Europe-wide and an appropriate legal environment to maintain them is...

While near-natural forest stands are dramatically diminishing, monoculture tree plantations are rapidly spreading globally, including the eastern part of Central Europe. Tree plantations are regarded as simplified and species-poor ecosystems, but their functional and phylogenetic diversity and ecological value are still mostly unknown. In the prese...

We present PADAPT 1.0, the Pannonian Database of Plant Traits which relies on regional data sources and integrates existing data and new measurements on a wide range of traits and attributes of the plant species of the Pannonian Biogeographical Region and makes it freely accessible at www.padapt.eu. The current version covers the species of the reg...

Under increasing pressure of climatic change and anthropogenic eutrophication, water blooms, i.e. the formation of high phytoplankton biomass of a single or a few species, have become more and more frequent in lake ecosystems that is caused mostly by Cyanobacteria. The dynamics of phytoplankton under a cyanobacterial pressure may provide important...

Ecosystems with forest and grassland patches as alternative stable states usually contain various closed, semi‐open and open habitats, which may be aligned along a vegetation cover gradient. Taxonomic diversity usually peaks near the middle of the gradient, but our knowledge on functional and phylogenetic diversity trends along gradients is more li...

Soil seed banks play a major role in the post-fire regeneration of semi-arid mountain grasslands. Plant species present before fire can determine the soil seed bank (SSB) characteristics in fire-prone ecosystems. However, it remains unclear how the density and species composition of the SSB under the canopy cover of specific shrub species may be af...

The most widespread nature-based solution for mitigating climate change is tree planting. When realized as forest restoration in historically forested biomes, it can efficiently contribute to the sequestration of atmospheric carbon and can also entail significant biodiversity and ecosystem service benefits. Conversely, tree planting in naturally op...

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–...

Ranunculus psilostachys is native to the Balkan Peninsula and in Hungary it is currently known from the Villány Mountains and the Nyárád–Harkány Plain. Its origin in Hungary (native vs. introduced) has been debated since it was first discovered in the country. In this paper we provide an overview of the distribution of the species in Europe and Hun...

Species abundance distributions (SADs) link species richness with species abundances and are an important tool in the quantitative analysis of ecological communities. Niche‐based and sample‐based SAD models predict different spatial scaling properties of SAD parameters. However, empirical research on SAD scaling properties is largely missing. Here...

Trait-based ecology is gaining ground nowadays on species-based ecology: the number of research and publication focusing on the ecological role of taxa instead of the species themselves increased significantly in the last two decades. One great advantage of this approach is that communities with different species composition due to great geographic...

Aim We evaluated stands of the invasive grass, Sporobolus cryptandrus in its native North American range and its non‐native European range, where it is a recent invader. Our aim was to reveal how the species’ increasing abundance affects functional diversity and the ecosystem service‐provisioning capacities of plant communities in both ranges. Loc...

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...

Although long-distance dispersal (LDD) events are rare and stochastic, they are disproportionately important and drive several large-scale ecological processes; yet, we have a very limited understanding of their frequency, extent and consequences. Humanity intentionally spreads several species, which is associated with the accidental dispersal of o...

The Decade on Ecosystem Restoration aims to provide the means and incentives for upscaling restoration efforts worldwide. Although ecosystem restoration is a broad, interdisciplinary concept, effective ecological restoration requires sound ecological knowledge to successfully restore biodiversity and ecosystem services in degraded landscapes. We em...

A Duna-Tisza közi homokhátságon az 1970-es évektől jelentős szárazodás figyelhető meg, mely veszélyezteti a térség gazdasági termelékenységét és a vízigényes élőhelyek fennmaradását. Jelenleg nincs konszenzus a szárazodást kiváltó tényezők egymáshoz viszonyított szerepéről. A legellentmondásosabb a homokfásítás kérdése, mely a homoki erdőgazdálkodá...

Although long-distance dispersal (LDD) events are considered to be rare and highly stochastic, they are disproportionately important and drive several large-scale ecological processes. The realisation of the disproportionate importance of LDD has led to an upsurge in studies of this phenomenon; yet, we still have a very limited understanding of its...

A decrease in habitat amount and connectivity causes immediate or delayed species extinctions in transformed landscapes due to reduced functional connections among populations and altered environmental conditions. We assessed the effects of present and historical grassland amount and connectivity as well as local habitat factors typical of the pres...

One of the main goals of the EU Biodiversity Strategy for 2030 is to avoid further loss of biodiversity and to restore ecosystems. These efforts can be facilitated by compiling the main research topics related to conservation biology to provide new evidence for the most urgent knowledge gaps, and publicise it to researchers, research funders and po...

Grassland restoration is gaining momentum worldwide to tackle the loss of biodiversity and associated ecosystem services. Restoration methods and their effects on ecological community reassembly have been extensively studied across various grassland types, while the importance of post‐restoration management has so far received less attention. Grass...

The prevailing nature-based solution to tackle climate change is tree planting. However, there is growing evidence that it has serious contraindications in many regions. The main shortcoming of global tree planting is its awareness disparity to alternative ecosystem types, mainly grasslands. Grasslands, where they constitute the natural vegetation,...

Drainage canals are widespread components of agricultural landscapes. Although canals have greatly contributed to biodiversity loss by desiccating wetlands, they have recently attracted conservation attention due to their potential to function as refugia for native species in intensively managed landscapes. However, their conservation role in compl...

A fundamental question in community ecology is how the quantity of floral resources affects pollinator activity and how this relates to the structure and robustness of pollination networks. The issue has been mainly addressed at the species level, while at the community level several questions are still open. Using a species‐rich semi‐natural grass...

Restoration of degraded drylands is urgently needed to mitigate climate change, reverse desertification and secure livelihoods for the two billion people who live in these areas. Bold global targets have been set for dryland restoration to restore millions of hectares of degraded land. These targets have been questioned as overly ambitious, but wit...

A full list of affiliations appears at the end of the paper. R estoration ecology is rapidly advancing in response to the ever-expanding global decline in ecosystem integrity and its associated socioeconomic repercussions 1-4. Nowhere are these dynamics more evident than in drylands, which help sustain 39% of the world's human population 5 but rema...

Aims Understanding fine-grain diversity patterns across large spatial extents is fundamental for macroecological research and biodiversity conservation. Using the GrassPlot database, we provide benchmarks of fine-grain richness values of Palaearctic open habitats for vascular plants, bryophytes, lichens and complete vegetation (i.e., the sum of the...

Even though microscopic algae play pivotal role in the healthy functioning of freshwater ecosystems, recent water protection strategies rarely consider them and primarily focus on macroscopic organisms. Here, we studied the effect of protection level and utilization type of lowland standing waters on the composition and diversity of benthic diatom...

For the effective control of an invasive species, gathering as much information as possible on its ecology, establishment and persistence in the subjected communities is of utmost importance. We aimed to review the current distribution and characteristics of Sporobolus cryptandrus (sand dropseed), an invasive C4 grass species of North American orig...

Aims We tested the establishment success of grassland species in the presence or absence of zoochory by livestock and identified the traits associated with successful establishment. Location Hortobágy National Park, Hungary. Methods In six restored species-poor grasslands we established two species-rich 16 m²-sized source plots per site in 2013....

Questions: Species-area relationships (SARs) are fundamental for understanding biodiversity patterns and are generally well described by a power law with a constant exponent z. However, z-values sometimes vary across spatial scales. We asked whether there is a general scale dependence of z-values at fine spatial grains and which potential drivers i...