Restoration Ecology Group

Yesterday, 10th of May, the "Focus group" activity took place in Prague. A group of people dealing with ecological restoration in the Czech Republic discussed the necessity and need for its integration into vocational education and training. From our point of view, the discussion was very interesting and beneficial. The event also included an excursion with examples of good practice.

In cooperation with our colleagues from Spain, Germany, Norway, and the European Chapter of the Society for Ecological Restoration, we are launching a project that aims to find out how the restoration ecology stands. Across different disciplines and sectors, from high schools, through farmers, to NGOs, we will search what we already know about restoration ecology and try to identify knowledge gaps. Our findings should contribute to improving the vocational training in restoration ecology in the future. For more information see http://www.restoration-ecology.eu/trainer.

The quarries in the Bohemian Karst are very impressive even outside the vegetation season. We took advantage of it and selected suitable experimental plots and established an experiment there. In this dramatic environment, Farwa will monitor the establishment success of several sown species in younger and older successional stages. And because there never are too many experiments, we established a similar experiment in a re-grassed field. But most importantly, all plots were localized by our brand new geodetic GPS! The adventure does not end there - next week, we plan to visit active quarries where we (firmly believe) will find young successional stages and establish other experimental plots.

The European Chapter of the Society for Ecological Restoration calls on the European Commission to take into account, develop and incorporate twelve recommendations in the process of reducing biodiversity loss and climate change when discussing the new law on restoration and nature protection. The Declaration has already been signed by more than 1,300 scientists and supported by 30 organizations. #Science4EUrestorenature

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).