NERVE4 Action
about project -> NERVE4 Action – Network establishment for V4 wetland forest protection
Celebrating the Successful Completion of the NERVE4 Project
As we mark the end of the implementation period of the NERVE4 project, it’s with great pride that we announce a triumphant conclusion to this ambitious endeavor. Thanks to the unwavering dedication and collaboration of our team and partners, we’ve achieved remarkable success in establishing a comprehensive monitoring network across the Visegrad Four (V4) region. This network has been meticulously designed to collect environmental data and conduct annual vegetation sampling in alder carrs, providing invaluable insights into these unique ecosystems. For those interested in delving deeper into our project’s scope and impact, we invite you to explore our e-Brochure. This resource, available for download below, details our monitoring activities and includes a map of the localities where our efforts are focused. While we celebrate this milestone, we recognize that our journey is far from over. Our commitment to monitoring and research continues, as we aim to gather more data and, hopefully, publish significant results that will contribute to the broader understanding of ecological processes and climate change impacts. We are excited about the future of this project and the potential discoveries that lie ahead.
At this juncture, we extend our heartfelt gratitude to all the participants who have contributed to the success of the NERVE4 project. Your dedication, expertise, and collaborative spirit have been the driving force behind our achievements. We also express our profound appreciation to the Visegrad Fund for their support and the opportunity to bring this project to fruition. Your belief in our vision has been instrumental in our accomplishments. In conjunction with this announcement, we are thrilled to release two key outputs of our project: an educational brochure and a complementary video. The brochure, available for download below, serves as a rich informational resource, while the video, accessible directly on YouTube, provides a visually engaging overview of our work and its significance. As we look to the future, we remain committed to advancing our understanding of alder carrs and contributing to the conservation and sustainable management of these vital ecosystems. Stay tuned for more updates and discoveries from the NERVE4 project team!
NERVE4 Action Conference Meeting report (7/21-7/22/2023)
The Meeting Conference was a resounding success, bringing together all the participants from the project and few enthusiasts for two days of insightful discussions and excursions. The conference, held on July 21st and 22nd, aimed to foster collaboration and exchange of ideas among scientific experts and students. Attendees were treated to a series of speeches delivered by project members, shedding light on the Alder carr situation through Visegrad countries. If you want to see whole action report click here.
Join Us for the Upcoming NERVE4 Wetland Forest Protection Conference in Prague
We’re excited to announce our upcoming conference meeting on Wetland Forest Protection in Central Europe, taking place on 21st of July in the beautiful city of Prague, Czech Republic. This conference is part of our ongoing project dedicated to mapping the vegetation of wetland forests across the Visegrád Group countries – Czech Republic, Slovakia, Poland, and Hungary.
The conference will kick off at 9:00 AM with registration and a welcome coffee session, providing an opportunity to network with other participants and prepare for the exciting day ahead. The formal opening ceremony will commence at 10:00 AM, followed by a keynote speech from a distinguished quest.Presentations from experts across the V4 region will follow, focusing on the unique challenges and solutions in wetland forest protection. After lunch, we will continue with more insightful presentations, culminating in a panel discussion where representatives from each country will share their experiences and insights on common challenges and solutions.The second day of the conference will be an immersive experience, as we embark on an organized excursion trip to one of our monitored localities, Černiš in South Bohemia. This field trip will provide a practical perspective of our work and give participants firsthand experience of the ecosystems we strive to protect.
This conference promises to be a unique forum for sharing knowledge, fostering cooperation, and promoting the importance of wetland forest protection in Central Europe. We invite all our project partners, environmental scientists, policy makers, and anyone interested in wetland forest conservation to join us for this event. Please mark your calendars and stay tuned for more details about registration, speakers, and logistics. Together, we can make a difference in protecting our valuable wetland forests. We look forward to seeing you in Prague!
Finishing up in Czechia - 31.08.2022
For the project we used known locality Černiš in South Bohemia. Weather was not that pleasent this time and we had to work through occasional small rain. Our initial plan was to sample whole locality in one day, as we are quite familiar with it, but our we had litlle luck. Our camera, which we use to collect data of tree canopy, died because the battery broke and we had to came back for the second one and visit Černiš once more to make the photos. On the other side, the local conditions was not that harsh and locality was not that drought like the others. We all had to use high waders to be able to move through the high water.
As this was our final field work this year, we will now work on preparing of educational materials, analysing the already aquired data and you can look forward to next year when we will host Conference in České Budějovice with the excursion into the Černiš. We will inform you with the more details in time, but expected date is sometime in half of May 2023.
National reserve Šúr in Slovakia - 18.08.2022
Šúr is 655ha large protected area because of historicaly unique mixture of woodlands and treeless vegetation. We also found there Urtica kioviensis but in lower abundance. It is very nice looking place with bigger hummocks a heterogeneous age of trees, but aswell as in Poland or Hungary, almost no aboveground water was present. Work in Slovakia was especially pleasant as we had nice weather and really good accomodation with social room where we could spend the evenings and play a pool. We spent there overall 3 nights and finished the work in 2 day in the field.
Second locality is in Hungary - 25.07.2022
Two weeks after executing field work in Poland, our research team have visited protected area of Ócsa in Hungary. We arrived at evening 25th of july and spent first night at the Institute of botany, which has a beautiful garden with many tree and plant species with wetland section aswell, with many interesting species, for example Taxodium distichum with a big aerial roots. We met here Dr. Ferenc Horváth who was our guide and selected the suitable locality. While speaking about our project, this locality is on the opposite climate gradient and is noticeably different from the Polish one. Due to dryer conditions, Alnus glutinosa is generaly more rare in Hungary and therefore Alder carrs aswell. On our locality is A. glutinosa mixed with Fraxinus excelsior and in herb layer was dominant glowing Urtica kioviensis (image below). On the top of dryer climate, this season was very low in terms of precipitiation and vegetation was visibly suffering from the lack of water. When we were installing the water level logger, we found water 130 cm under the ground! It is normal for waterlevel in wetland forests to fluctuate during the season and in longer periods and sometimes waterlevel is belowground, but this seems like too much extreme conditions. Maybe with the ongoing climate change we can expect shift to these conditions even in the more continental areas. Therefore it is important to study these areas simultaneously.
All the tasks were done according to the plan. We found suitable hummocks and sampled them in two days. For the installment of level logger we used a hollow left by a fallen tree, which helped a lot while finding the deep water.
Field work begins in Poland - 12.07.2022
On the 12th of July we arrived to the tiny village Niezgoda where we were accommodated in hunters lodge. Nature reserve olszyny niezgodzkie and surrounding forests were almost next to the lodge so we had very easy and fast access to the studied locality. The same day we went for a walk to see possible areas for our monitoring and to see Nature reserve. We selected part of the big area forest complex next to the Nature reserve and we asked local foresters to exclude this part of the forest from any management.
Second and third day we took our equipment to the field and started to building monitoring plots. Water level was exceptionally low, which makes our work a bit easier, but sometime soon it will be refilled with water as the fluctuation of water level is common in Alder carrs. We will monitor the water level and analyse the fluctuation through the year and also more years trend. Overall we installed 20 TMS loggers on the hummocks to measure temperature in the soil, on the surface, above the ground and also humidity in the soil. One Solinst Levelogger is installed there and it monitors water level and conductivity. we also collected many phytosociological relevés with many species like. Action ends with final meeting and 15th of July we came back to the Czech republic. It was very successful start of the project. The same methods will be applied in Hungary on the 25th of July to 28th of July in Ócsa and our monitoring network will keep growing.
Some more photos from the action can be found in our gallery section.
Project approved! - 04.05.2022
We have achieved the most important step, our project proposal was accepted in first selection tender in 2022. We are very grateful for this opportunity and we are starting necessary work immediately. In addition to administrative tasks, the NERVE4 group have to discuss detailed methodology and order measurement tools that will be placed in monitoring plots in all V4 countries!
The project is co-financed by the Governments of Czechia, Hungary, Poland and Slovakia through Visegrad Grants from International Visegrad Fund. The mission of the fund is to advance ideas for sustainable regional cooperation in Central Europe.
https://www.visegradfund.org/
Participants
Czech University of Life Sciences Prague, Faculty of Environmental Sciences
Centre for Ecological Research, Institute of Ecology and Botany
University of Agriculture in Kraków, Faculty of Forestry
