Restoration Ecology Group

Sometimes you need to be flexible - when you cannot do your PhD research in Pakistan due to a pandemic and you choose White Carpathians instead. And sometimes it is necessary even for botanists to have a headlamp in the field - when you establish an experiment and sow meadow species into meadows restored using regional seed mixtures and it gets dark. Good luck to our PhD student Ume Farwa!

During one week, we visited three freshly revitalized South Bohemian peat bogs. Borkovice, Hrdlořezy and Vlčí jámy have a lot in common. All of them were previously industrially mined. And all of them have been revitalized in recent months to restore their water regime. Blocking of drainage channels and the creation of shallow water pools will help to return the groundwater level to a more suitable state and enable the original peat bog biota to return back.

The advantage of long-term monitoring of permanent plots is that you look in detail at the succession process. As in Vaté písky near Bzenec, for example, where we monitor the restoration of sandy grasslands. The successional development, or better the species turnover, can also be observed in the composition of the working team.

Today, the faculty celebrated 30 years anniversary and our working got involved in the celebration program. The aim was to show that botany is not boring and can be perceived by all of senses. It attracted a lot of attention. Everyone could see a variety of mini-habitats (from the pond to the sand pit), try out to determine plants, walk barefoot along the natural sidewalk, determine the plants by smell, and the bravest could also taste a variety of plants (even the famous durian).

Members of our working group actively participate in the virtual SER conference. The topics of presentations were diverse. Klara talked about "Ten-year progress in the restoration of dry grasslands on arable land using a regional seed mixture: still on the way or on the home stretch?" Kamila presented the results of our peat bog project in a talk "Biodiversity restoration of formerly mined raised bogs - vegetation succession and recovery of other trophic groups". Miguel evaluated the participation of non-native species in successional series within our DaSS database: "Alien species in vegetation succession: participation, temporal trends and determining factors in various central European series". And Anička presented the results of her study on the development of aquatic and wetland vegetation in mining sites in a presentation entitled "Spontaneous succession of aquatic and wetland vegetation in post-mine sites".

Reports from the conference:

Our "conference venue" and especially our conference lunch made us famous.

Karel Prach has already been famous thanks to his work in the field of ecology of restoration. He shared his experience during a meeting with other scientists within the conference program.

We enjoy the European Conference on Ecological Restoration at the Department of Botany - almost as if we were in Alicante. Karel Prach has already given his presentation, the rest is still waiting for their turn. The most important thing is not ot underestimate the conference lunch and tea break.

This year, we collected data from the last locality of uranium spoil heaps in the Czech Republic, from Horní Slavkov. Compared to the spoil heaps in Jáchymov, there grow less spruce, but more deciduous trees. In comparison with the spoil heaps in Příbram, they overgrow much faster. The spoil heaps already look as integrated parts of the local landscape with an interesting relief, often still copying the style of dumping.

... or another part of the mini-series Restoration ecology in practice. This time we visited Vlčí Jámy, a peatbog mined in the past. Thanks to the project of the Administration of the Šumava National Park, Life for Mires, the revitalization is successfully proceeding. For the third year in a row, we examine the succession of various trophic groups - plants, mosses, fungi and insects, at the peatbog. Following an agreement with the Administration of the National Park, our monitoring sites will be maintained in the future. We will thus have the opportunity to monitor the impact of revitalization on the organisms.