The results of our research have been presented at the SER conference held in Reykjavik, Iceland this week. Klára Řehounková talked about the restoration of psammophytic grasslands and Anna Müllerová turned attention on spontaneous succession in aquatic and wetland habitats. Karel Prach presented general trends concerning vegetation establishment in various disturbed sites across Europe. Two more external members of our restoration group, Ivana Jongepirová and Ondřej Mudrák demonstrated another restoration topics focused on species traits and also practical aspects in the implementation of using regional seed mixture. We also visited some restoration projects in the field during the mid-conference excursion.
You are kindly invited to contribute your successional data to the European Database of Successional Series (EDaSS). We aim to compile existing successional data of changes in vegetation following disturbance and thus enlarge an existing unique dataset from multiple human-disturbed sites across the Czech Republic (
The flower strips in the university campus are already in flower. We are really happy about how they look like. Besides many flowers of Leucanthemum, we can find also flowering Lychnis viscaria, Salvia pratensis, or Reseda lutea. We were surprised that this spring we could not see any nice blue flowers of Centaurea cyanus. Still, we dare to say that the flower strips are nice this year. We are curious how many plant species and how many interesting species of butterflies and bees we will find during the monitoring this year. Therefore we kindly ask - please do not pluck the plants.
Klára Řehounková represented SER Europe in the Expert Panel Action organized by the 
We take advantage of sunny spring days and go to the field. One of our field trips led us to Milovice where an existing wild horse pasture will be enlarged. Part of this future pasture is and abandoned field which we intend to regrass by a biomass transfer. Therefore we searched for suitable donor sites for green hay harvesting during our field trip. We are already curious if the hay transfer will be successful and the abandoned field become a nice pasture with a lot of flowering herbs.
Ten years ago, our former student observed vegetation development on 4 dumps after uranium mining near Příbram. Our master student Katka Vejvodová will repeat the study this year. Therefore we went together to the field to see how the spoil heaps currently look like and to find suitable plots for vegetation sampling.
The Restoration ecology group went to the field again after the winter. This time, we visited two localities in the PLA Podyjí where Exmoor ponies will start to graze at the end of April. It is a unique opportunity to compare development of extensively grazed vegetation with non-grazed vegetation. Our colleagues from Brno who already have experience with similar observations, a representative of Administration of the PLA, and Miloslav Jirků who is responsible for the ponies accompanied us into the field. Together we have found suitable plots for monitoring of the vegetation development. And now the ponies can come and start to graze!
Miguel Ballesteros Jiménez, who spent several months of his internship with our group, defended his dissertation thesis last week at the University of Granada. His thesis on Restoration of gypsum habitats affected by quarrying: Guidance for assisted vegetation recovery received an excellent evaluation. Klára Řehounková, who also participated, immediately shared her impression with us: "The defense was really great. None of the opponents had any major comment and I believe the results of the thesis will have practical applications." We congratulate Miguel and hope that he will continue with his interesting work. 
