Gyepek biodiverzitása és helyreállítása: szakmai szerkesztett különszámok

Az elkövetkezendő 2022-2023-as időszakban három szakterületi különszámba is várjuk hazai kutatók anyagait. Az alábbiakban ismertetem a különszámok részleteit és a tervezett határidőket.

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Restoration of open ecosystems in the face of climate change

GLOBAL ECOLOGY & CONSERVATION (Elsevier, Q1, IF: 3.380) 

Guest editors: Török Péter, Aveliina Helm (Estonia), Jayashree Ratnam (India), Fernando A. O. Silveira (Brazil), Tölgyesi Csaba

Open ecosystems occur all around the world in various forms including temperate and tropical grasslands, savannas, shrublands, heathlands and many more. Open ecosystems are home to unique biodiversity, provide key ecosystem services and sustain traditional livelihoods of tens of millions of people worldwide. Their dynamic ecology, often including disturbance dependence, as well as their high biodiversity and ecosystem service provisioning capacity have been in the spotlight of research for long, yet open ecosystems have not received adequate conservation and restoration attention. The UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration and other large-scale biodiversity and climate mitigation strategies now offer outstanding opportunities during the upcoming years. Restoration methods and resulting community assembly mechanisms have been thoroughly explored for temperate grasslands, but we know much less about the recovery of other parameters, including functional trait composition, ecosystem services and functions and potential trade-offs between them. The importance of post-restoration management is still unclear and understudied, mostly because of the narrow time-frame of most studies. In tropical regions, experience with open ecosystems restoration is way more limited; we are still expecting major advancements in basic concepts. In the meantime, climate change introduces uncertainties into restoration planning and success evaluation, amplyfying the challenges restoration practitioners need to face. Climate change promotes range shifts of species and facilitates plant invasions, such as alien C4 grasses into restored open ecosystems. The high societal pressure to use nature-based solutions for global issues often misguides efforts and promotes alternative ecosystem restoration, creating conflicts between open ecosystem restoration and afforestation, which should be reconcieled before irreversible loss of biodiversity and depletion of ecosystem services provisioning, such as water shortage. Practitioners aiming to restore open ecosystems need the support of the scientific community more than ever. The aim of this Special Feature is to contribute to the solution of the highlighted imminent challenges with an attention-grabbing collection of high-quality publications.

Further information: 

https://www.journals.elsevier.com/global-ecology-and-conservation/call-for-papers/restoration-of-open-ecosystems-in-the-face-of-climate-change

A lap Gold Open Access, ide publikálási díjat kell fizetni - ezt a jelen különszám esetében a reguláris közlési díj 50%-ára sikerült mérsékelni (cikkenként az így fizetendő díj 910 USD, ~300 EFt, ami nemzetközi összehasonlításban is nagyon kedvező publikálási díjat jelent és az EISZ által biztosított keretszerződés bizonyos számú hazai affiliációval rendelkező meghatározó szerzőség esetében ezt a közlési díjat fedezheti)

Deadlines
Full paper submission after invitation by 15th of September, 2022

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Grazing effects on vegetation: biodiversity, management and restoration

APPLIED VEGETATION SCIENCE (Wiley, Q1, IF: 3.270) 

Guest editors: Török Péter, Regina Lindborg (Sweden), David Eldridge (Australia), Robin Pakeman (United Kingdom)

Grazing has a major influence on vegetation composition and functioning and is considered to be essential for managing open vegetation types, worldwide. While in historical times wild grazers maintained most open landscapes, nowadays free wild grazers have been replaced by domestic herbivores in many areas, e.g., various types of livestock. Understanding grazing effects on the plant composition and functional diversity of vegetation, as well as its effects on ecosystem functioning and services is essential from both theoretical and applied aspects. The grazing animals can influence vegetation dynamical processes in multiple ways. The most evident direct way is the selective biomass removal from the community, but grazers also influence the vegetation dynamical processes by their trampling, nutrient addition by dung and urine deposition or by the transport of propagules both by ecto- or endozoochory. Also, several indirect effects of grazing occur, for example the alteration of microclimate, competition symmetry or alteration of reproductive success can be recognised. There is a vast knowledge accumulated on grazing and its effects on vegetation, but our understanding of the interaction between the type of grazer, grazing intensity and subjected plant community type is far from complete. The aims of this special issue are to i) discuss the role of grazing in vegetation dynamics and functioning, ii) understand compositional and diversity changes in plant communities subjected to grazing by wild grazers and/or livestock, and iii) provide guidelines for an effective biodiversity conservation and restoration in fragmented and human-driven landscapes.

Deadlines
Abstract submission for evaluation by the 31st March, 2022
Full paper submission after invitation by 15th of September, 2022
Expected competition of the special issue by the first half of 2023

Abstracts should be submitted as an MS Word file (*.doc) to Péter Török (molinia@gmail.com). The format of the abstracts (length, style etc.) should be in agreement with the author guidelines of the journal Applied Vegetation Science. The guest editor team evaluates the submitted abstract based on scope, scientific quality, scientific novelty and form. They decide about the invitation of a full paper in collaboration with the journals’ chief editor team. The invited papers will undergo a regular review for the journal.

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Origin, Conservation, and Restoration of the Threatened European Grassland Ecosystem in the Anthropocene

FRONTIERS IN ECOLOGY AND EVOLUTION (Frontiers Group, Q1, IF: 4.171) 

Guest editors: Grégory Mahy (France), Thierry Dutoit (France), Kathrin Kiehl (Germany), Armin Bischoff (France), Török Péter

Natural and Semi-Natural Grassland Ecosystems (NSG) represent high-value biodiversity hotspots for biodiversity of the European continent, as well as an invaluable cultural heritage forged through millennia of human-nature interactions. While pristine natural European grasslands result mainly from constrained specific climatic and soil conditions, semi-natural grasslands largely result from the activities of humans and their livestock (e.g. grazing, mowing, burning) during millennia of low-intensity land use. European NSG, their biodiversity, and the cultural heritage they represent are highly threatened since the beginning of the 20th century in a context of multifactorial global change including environmental dimensions (climate change, habitat fragmentation, pollution, biological invasions) and land-use changes with the accelerating of socio-economic evolution of agricultural practices (intensification or abandonment) and urbanization. The extent and time-scale of global change challenge our present understanding and practices of conservation and restoration of European NSG. Emerging novel urban ecosystems and new practices of restoration such as rewilding, with a focus on spontaneously forest-dominated European landscape, also put in question the future of NSG. In this context, the future of European NSG can only be fully understood in light of their origin. Grassland restoration research and management globally receives less attention than forests or freshwater habitats, although grasslands are critical for sustaining landscape multifunctionality and capacity to support biodiversity. This Research Topic intends to illustrate and synthesize the diversity of ongoing research on the origin, conservation, and restoration of European natural, semi-natural grasslands in response to major environmental drivers of global change, evolution of agriculture, urbanization, and emerging rewilding strategy.

Further informtaion: https://www.frontiersin.org/research-topics/31714/origin-conservation-and-restoration-of-the-threatened-european-grassland-ecosystem-in-the-anthropoce

Deadlines
Abstract submission for evaluation by the 31st March, 2022
Full paper submission after invitation by 31st of July, 2022