Modelling of the potential natural vegetation

The potential natural vegetation (PNV) concept can serve as null model, i.e. a basis of assessing departure from the potential in vegetation ecology, particularly at landscape scale. It expresses the vegetation that can survive under current abiotic environmental conditions (Tüxen 1956). However, PNV is an estimation, not a measurement, thus it is affected by the uncertainty in our estimations. Furthermore, vegetation realisation is not necessarily deterministic either. Therefore, the traditional deterministic view of PNV is actually simplified and more than a single vegetation type can be potential per one site. To handle this problem, we introduced the concept of Multiple Potential Natural Vegetation (MPNV, Somodi et al. 2012), which treats PNV as a probability distribution of vegetation types per location. Two MPNV estimations exist to this date, one for Hungary and another for Bayern (Somodi et al. 2017, Fischer et al. in press). MPNV can serve as a basis for applications, such as landscape evaluation and restoration planning (e.g. Török et al. 2018).

The Hungarian MPNV estimate covering the full country is available for overview from the Hungarian Vegetation Survey portal and in 700 m resolution for further research and applications upon request.

The MPNV concept is designed to be applicable in any regions. If you have become interested, feel free to contact us, we are delighted to cooperate.

A wide variety of MSc and PhD topics are also linked to this project, interested students are welcome to contact us by e-mail.