Soil organic carbon (SOC), known as the most important soil attribute, affects various soil functions and services, essential for nutritious food and clean drinking water. Since recognizing its key role in many environmental challenges, there has been an increasing demand for spatial information on SOC. Our objective is to present the results of a mapping activity aimed at producing spatially exhaustive information on SOC content, density, and stock for the topsoils of Hungary for 1992 and 2000.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFSpatially explicit, quantitative information on soil hydraulic properties is required in various modelling schemes. At European scale, EU-SoilHydroGrids proved its applicability in a number of studies, in ecological predictions, geological and hydrological hazard assessment, agri-environmental models, among others. Inspired by its continental antecedent, an analogous, but larger scale, national, 3D soil hydraulic database was elaborated for the territory of Hungary (HU-SoilHydroGrids) supported by various improvements (i-iv) in the computation process.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFFreshwater lakes in most inhabited areas of the world are threatened by water quality issues. Standard water conservation measures have shown efficiency in the past; however, polluted lakes have only partially recovered from eutrophication. Our knowledge is still incomplete about the sensitivity of these lakes to different anthropogenic sources and to the changes in their internal processes due to global warming.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe particular importance of evolutionary studies in microbial experimental systems is that starting from the level of the metabolism of individual cells, the adaptive dynamics can be followed step by step by biochemical, genetic, and population dynamical tools. Moreover, the coincidence of evolutionary and ecological time scales helps to clarify the mutual role of ecological and evolutionary principles in predicting adaptive dynamics in general. Ecological principles define the ecological conditions under which adaptive branching can occur.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFRiverine 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 mitigation once the water has accumulated in the stream.
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