Ecosystem services in Hungary – new publication

As we have previously reported, a large-scale comprehensive assessment of twelve ecosystem services and several ecosystem condition indicators was conducted for Hungary in the last couple of years as part of the Nösztép project. Now the researchers, including Ákos Bede-Fazekas, senior lecturer of our department, aimed to identify patterns of ecosystem service multifunctionality, reveal relationships between ecosystem services and conditions, and delineate bundles of ecosystem service capacity in an integrated spatial analysis. The results showed outstanding multifunctionality of natural ecosystem types compared with the more artificial types, emphasizing the importance of natural areas in order to fulfill human needs. It was found that native forests provide the most varied range of services, which underlines the importance of forest management to consider multiple services. The research was led by Eszter Tanács, a research fellow at the Centre for Ecological Research, who collaborated with several researchers from, among others, the Centre for Ecological Research, the Eötvös Loránd University, the Centre for Agricultural Research, and the Ministry of Agriculture. The paper is now available in the Q1-ranked journal Sustainability.