Robert Kanka

Institute of Landscape Ecology Slovak Academy of Sciences · Department of Ecological Analyses

Research in global change ecology relies heavily on global climatic grids derived from estimates of air temperature in open areas at around 2 m above the ground. These climatic grids do not reflect conditions below vegetation canopies and near the ground surface, where critical ecosystem functions occur and most terrestrial species reside. Here, we...

Litter decomposition is a key process for carbon and nutrient cycling in terrestrial ecosystems and is mainly controlled by environmental conditions, substrate quantity, and quality as well as microbial community abundance and composition. In particular, the effects of climate and atmospheric nitrogen (N) deposition on litter decomposition and its...

Deciduous thermophilous oak forests (phytosociological class Quercetea pubescentis) are among the most species-rich and most endangered forest communities in central Europe. Thanks to the varied topography, bedrock, biogeographical influences and rather well-preserved semi-natural and near-natural forest vegetation, Slovakia harbours a diverse heri...

Research in environmental science relies heavily on global climatic grids derived from estimates of air temperature at around 2 meter above ground1-3. These climatic grids however fail to reflect conditions near and below the soil surface, where critical ecosystem functions such as soil carbon storage are controlled and most biodiversity resides4-8...

Achieving sustainable development as an inclusive societal process in rural landscapes, and sustainability in terms of functional green infrastructures for biodiversity conservation and ecosystem services, are wicked challenges. Competing claims from various sectors call for evidence-based adaptive collaborative governance. Leveraging such approach...

Context Maintaining functional green infrastructures (GIs) require evidence-based knowledge about historic and current states and trends of representative land cover types. Objectives We address: (1) the long-term loss and transformation of potential natural forest vegetation; (2) the effects of site productivity on permanent forest loss and emerg...

Current analyses and predictions of spatially‐explicit patterns and processes in ecology most often rely on climate data interpolated from standardized weather stations. This interpolated climate data represents long‐term average thermal conditions at coarse spatial resolutions only. Hence, many climate‐forcing factors that operate at fine spatiote...

The extensive construction of drainage systems in the lowlands and flood plains of Slovakia has significantly changed the landscape and runoff ratios of rivers. Our study focuses on the assessment of the benefits provided by the ecosystems of water ditches and their catchment areas. Ditches and their buffer zone, similarly to other artificial anthr...

Current analyses and predictions of spatially‐explicit patterns and processes in ecology most often rely on climate data interpolated from standardized weather stations. This interpolated climate data represents long‐term average thermal conditions at coarse spatial resolutions only. Hence, many climate‐forcing factors that operate at fine spatiote...

Changes in management regime in recent decades have significantly contributed to threats to traditional European agricultural systems, but this has not been studied sufficiently. This paper examines these changes by considering the agroforestry system of traditional orchards in the Myjava-White Carpathian scattered settlement region (Slovakia) betw...

We present a revised and unified classification system of Quercetea pubescentis class in Slovakia. To assess target vegetation units we used a large data set of relevés of the Slovak forest vegetation obtained from national phytosociological database of Slovakia and private databases stored in Turbowin. Starting dataset consisted of 15 714 relevés...

In the past, historical rural Europe possessed a broad range of biological and cultural values due to landscape diversity and the use of low-impact agricultural practices. It's typical feature was the presence of varied semi-natural habitats. The massive socioeconomic changes of the 20th caused significant loss of these habitats. The term tradition...

Inadequate Monitoring and Evaluation (M&E) is often thought to hinder adaptive management of socio-ecological systems. A key influence on environmental management practices are environmental policies: however, their consequences for M&E practices have not been well-examined. We examine three policy areas - the Water Framework Directive, the Natura...

The data presented in this DiB article provide an overview of Monitoring and Evaluation (M&E) carried out for 3 European environmental policies (the Water Framework Directive, the Natura 2000 network of protected areas, and Agri-Environment Schemes implemented under the Common Agricultural Policy), as implemented in 9 cases (Catalonia (Spain), Esto...

Intensification of agriculture has led, among other negative consequences, also to drying out of wetlands. Nevertheless, some of the wetland biotopes were preserved as small spots. This paper discusses the importance of those areas serving as refugia for small terrestrial mammals. Because small terrestrial mammals in the middle of food webs, they s...

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While high mountain areas contain some of the best preserved and most sensitive environments, the alpine landscape occupies only 0.7% of Slovak territory and its rarity and endangerment are increasing. Although the highest mountains in Slovakia are nature-protected, they remain under continual threat from increasing numbers of visitors and demands...

Through litter decomposition enormous amounts of carbon is emitted to the atmosphere. Numerous large-scale decomposition experiments have been conducted focusing on this fundamental soil process in order to understand the controls on the terrestrial carbon transfer to the atmosphere. However, previous studies were mostly based on site-specific litt...

Globally accelerating trends in societal development and human environmental impacts since the mid-twentieth century1-7are known as the Great Acceleration and have been discussed as a key indicator of the onset of the Anthropocene epoch6. While reports on ecological responses (for example, changes in species range or local extinctions) to the Great...

Through litter decomposition enormous amount of carbon is emitted to the atmosphere. Numerous large-scale decomposition experiments have been conducted focusing on this fundamental soil process in order to understand the controls on the terrestrial carbon transfer to the atmosphere. However, previous studies were mostly based on site-specific litte...

Through litter decomposition enormous amounts of carbon is emitted to the atmosphere. Numerous large-scale decomposition experiments have been conducted focusing on this fundamental soil process in order to under-stand the controls on the terrestrial carbon transfer to the atmosphere. However, previous studies were mostly based on site-specific litt...

The report is summarising the preliminary findings: Blackstock K.L. et al. (2017) Monitoring and Evaluation for Ecosystem Management (MEEM), Technical Report, James Hutton Institute, 96 pages.

The studies focused on distribution and characteristic of small woodlands and trees as a typical feature of traditional agricultural landscapes (TAL) in Slovakia are missing or are rather local. The source data for this study was obtained from the national inventory of TAL performed in 2010-2012 in Slovakia, where woody vegetation was considered as...

Hanajík P., Zvarík M., Fritze H., Šimkovic I., Kanka R.: Composition of microbial PLFAs and correlations with topsoil characteristics in the rare active travertine spring-fed fen. Ekológia (Bratis-lava), Vol. 35, No. 4, p. 295–308, 2016. We studied soil PLFAs composition and specific soil properties among transect of small-scale fen in Stankovany,...

In the alpine life zone, plant diversity is strongly determined by local topography and microclimate. We assessed the extent to which aspect and its relatedness to temperature affect plant species diversity, and the colonization and disappearance of species on alpine summits on a pan-European scale. Mountain summits in Europe's alpine life zone. Va...

The Low Tatras National Park, situated in Central Slovakia, has excellent conditions for many sports activities, including ski resorts and natural tourist attractions. This study aims to comprehensively evaluate the impact of tourism development on the environment in the selected study area - Demanovska Valley - and prepare a proposal for sustainab...

Floodplain ecosystems are biodiversity hotspots and supply multiple ecosystem services. At the same time they are often prone to human pressures that increasingly impact their intactness. Multifunctional floodplain management can be defined as a management approach aimed at a balanced supply of multiple ecosystem services that serve the needs of th...

This strategic research agenda is the product of an enthusiastic year-long collaboration between researchers based in centres of excellence, across many different disciplines and European countries. Our primary goal is to highlight the importance of mountains in providing insights and solutions to many of Europe’s pressing challenges. To this end,...

Human activities impinge on vegetation through different mechanisms, or drivers of change, and different habitats vary in their sensitivity to these drivers. Increasing concern about environmental change has created a requirement for long-term vegetation change data that can quantify and characterise the change in a meaningful way. Botanical re-sur...

Foundation species can change plant community structure by modulating important ecological processes such as community assembly , yet this topic is poorly understood. In alpine systems , cushion plants commonly act as foundation species by ameliorating local conditions. Here , we analyze diversity patterns of species ' assembly within cushions and...

Orchards are typical landscape features with a long history in traditional agricultural landscape management. They are situated from lowlands to mountains, mostly in upland areas, where natural conditions are favorable for fruit tree cultivation. Traditional orchard landscape that represents one class of traditional agricultural landscape (TAL) in...

The concept of green infrastructure has been recently taken up by the European Commissionfor ensuring the provision of ecosystem services (ESS). It aims at the supply of multiple ESS in a given landscape, however, the effects of a full suite of management options on multiple ESS and landscape multifunctionality have rarely been assessed. In this pa...

Interactions among species determine local-scale diversity, but local interactions are thought to have minor effects at larger scales. However, quantitative comparisons of the importance of biotic interactions relative to other drivers are rarely made at larger scales. Using a data set spanning 78 sites and five continents, we assessed the relative...

Krnačova Z., Hreško J., Kanka R., Boltižiar M.: The evaluation of ecological factors affecting environmental functions of the soils in area of traditional agrarian structure. Ekologia (Bratislava),Vol. 32, No. 2, p. 248-261, 2013. Cultural landscape can be seen as a result of hundred years of founding and sensitive cultivation of landscape structur...

Abstract Background: Floodplains are among the most diverse, dynamic, productive and populated but also the most threatened ecosystems on Earth. Threats are mainly related to human activities that alter the landscape and disrupt fluvial processes to obtain benefits related to multiple ecosystem services (ESS). Floodplain management therefore requir...

Land Use Policy j o u r n a l h o m e p a g e : w w w . e l s e v i e r . c o m / l o c a t e / l a n d u s e p o l a b s t r a c t The abandonment of farmland has become a widespread phenomenon in post-socialist countries that have seen revolutionary changes in their economic systems. The phenomenon is notable in vineyard areas, where abandonment...

Litsted authors contributed to the EU Target 2 - Maintaining and enhancing ecosystems and their services. The complete list of contributors is provided in the paper.

The International Long Term Ecological Research (ILTER) network can coordinate ecological research to provide observations of the ecosystem changes, and their socio-economic impacts on human societies at different scales. In this paper we demonstrate the importance of the ILTER network in the study and monitoring of environmental changes at a globa...

Biotic interactions can shape phylogenetic community structure (PCS). However, we do not know how the asymmetric effects of foundation species on communities extend to effects on PCS. We assessed PCS of alpine plant communities around the world, both within cushion plant foundation species and adjacent open ground, and compared the effects of found...

In mountainous regions, climate warming is expected to shift species’ ranges to higher altitudes. Evidence for such shifts is still mostly from revisitations of historical sites. We present recent (2001 to 2008) changes in vascular plant species richness observed in a standardized monitoring network across Europe’s major mountain ranges. Species ha...

1. Disturbance is one of the most important factors structuring the taxonomic and functional composition of vegetation. Vegetation resistance or resilience to disturbance depends on local environmental conditions, further modifying the pool of species and traits. This paper aims to understand how disturbance and local environment combine to affect...

The Tatra National Park is the most visited national park in Slovakia. But the high number of visitors causes structural and compositional changes in vegetation around tourist paths, mountain lakes, mountain chalets and hotels. The impacts of trampling on vegetation and soil are perhaps one of the most extensively studied areas in recreation ecolog...

This paper is a reply to the criticisms formulated by Halme et al. against a meta-analysis dealing with the effects of forest management on biodiversity. We mainly contradicted the problems of pseudo-replication, distribution of covariable effects, taxonomic generalizations and inclusion criteria. We conclude on the necessity of compromises during...

Past and present pressures on forest resources have led to a drastic decrease in the surface area of unmanaged forests in Europe. Changes in forest structure, composition, and dynamics inevitably lead to changes in the biodiversity of forest-dwelling species. However, the possible biodiversity gains and losses due to forest management (i.e. anthrop...

The contribution is focused upon detail production-ecological analysis of the total herb layer biomass (aboveground-belowground-total) in the broad-leaved forest ecosystems of the Z̄alostínska vrchovina upland (the westernmost part of the Biele Karpaty Mts) and Zamdsko (the only forested part of the Chvojnická pahorkatina hilly country). There were...

Kollar J., Kubfček F., Šimonovič V., Kanka R.: Herb layer biomass of some broad-leaved forest ecsystems near Skalica (Biele Karpaty Mts). Ekoldgia (Bratislava), Vol. 28, No. 3, p. 225-233,2009. The paper is focused upon detail production-ecological analysis of the total herb layer biomass (above- and belowground) in four broad-leaved forest ecosyst...

Forest fire is an important phenomenon affecting forest ecosystem. It causes essential changes in ecological conditions (e.g. light availability, water and nutrient regime). The aim of this paper is to evaluate its impact on soil as well as herb and moss layer of the secondary pine forest. The study area is located in the southwestern part of Slova...

Phytosociological Characteristic of the Plant Communities With the Occurrence of Endemic Species Cyclamen Fatrense In this contribution we bring together the basic phytosociological characteristics of communities with the presence of species Cyclamen fatrense in the herb layer. The analysis was made on the basis of 30 original phytosociological rel...