Synergies in agriculture and nature conservation through hydrological restoration of ecologically valuable and cultivated wetlands in the drought-prone Hungarian Plain (Central and Eastern Europe)

Abstract

The establishment of a sustainable land use system integrating the mitigation capacity of wetlands is crucial in the plains of the temperate zone. Following the approaches of green infrastructure development programs and the spatial planning framework, two zones with potential for wetland conservation and restoration were selected in the Hungarian Plain (Central and Eastern Europe) covering an estimated 21 % of the landscape. Then, linking hydrological and ecosystem modelling tools, we estimated the groundwater recharge that would result from a hydrological restoration and its impact on surrounding maize fields with different groundwater levels and soil conditions. The amount of groundwater recharge ranged between 367 m³ ha^-1 and 552 m³ ha^-1; thus, the horizontal impact of the hydrological restoration as indicated by the ratio of the extension of the groundwater impact area and surface water in the May–August period, would be almost 2:1. Croplands in transition zones between high terraces and wetlands may reap the greatest benefit from the hydrological restoration of wetlands due to its edge effect, which results in more balanced year-to-year yields on fine-grained soils. This is what has led to an estimated 20 %–28 % increase in maize yields in such zones. The results of the investigation confirm the hypothesis that the hydrological restoration of wetlands may effectively mitigate increasing climate risk in drought vulnerable plains. These findings, complemented by the abundance of other services (e.g., flood regulation) provided by restored wetlands shed light on the intersectoral prospects of the hydrological restoration of wetlands in Europe.

Keywords

Drought mitigation / Groundwater recharge / Land use planning / Nature-based solutions / Ecosystem services / Sustainable groundwater management / Wetland restoration

Data availability

Data used for this research are available from: Copernicus (2019). Corine Land Cover 2018 (CLC2018) https://doi.org/10.2909/71c95a07-e296-44fc-b22b-415f42acfdf0; Copernicus (2025). Water and Wetness status 2018 Europe, 3-yearly. https://doi.org/10.2909/7992f641-bf77-47b7-b0c1-74fc832b78b1; Ministry of Agriculture (2022). National Ecosystem Map of Hungary (NEMH). http://alapterkep.termeszetem.hu/ (accessed 12 May 2022); Department of Energy (2022). Nature protection Data System (TIR). http://web.okir.hu/map/?config=TIR&lang=hu (accessed 12 May 2022); National Agricultural Research and Innovation Office (2015). Flood hazard mapping and risk management planning. https://www.vizugy.hu/vizstrategia/documents/81E46637-D6E2-469B-A482-298613A06132/1.%20melleklet%20Belvizi%20veszelyterkepezes%20eredmenyei.pdf (accessed 12 May 2022); Hungarian Hydrological Yearbooks (1983–2007). VITUKI, Budapest. (in Hungarian) (accessed 21 Februry 2022); Hydrological Management Yearbook (2022). KTVI, Szolnok. (in Hungarian) (accessed 11 March 2023); Institute for Soil Science Centre for Agricultural Research (2022). AGROTOPO (agro-suitability) dataset of Hungary. (https://maps.rissac.hu:3344/webappbuilder/apps/2/ (accessed 12 May 2022), satellite-based dataset for seasonal surface water occurrence. http://www.map.fomi.hu/copernicus/ (accessed 20 July 2023); KSH, 2025. Yields, harvested areas and land use. https://www.ksh.hu/stadat_eng?lang=en&theme=mez. (accessed 22 June 2022); Trans Tisza Water Directorate. 2023. Hydrological and hydrography data. (accessed 22 April 2022).

Declaration of competing interests

The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.

CRediT authorship contribution statement

Zsolt Pinke: Writing – review & editing, Writing – original draft, Visualization, Validation, Supervision, Methodology, Data curation, Conceptualization. Tamás Acs: Writing – review & editing, Writing – original draft, Software, Investigation. Bence Decsi: Validation, Data curation. Máté Krisztián Kardos: Validation, Software, Data curation. Matyas Arvai: Validation, Investigation. Veronika Fabók: Writing – review & editing, Writing – original draft. Jeno Zsolt Farkas: Writing – original draft, Conceptualization. Zoltan Gribovszki: Software, Investigation. Dora Hidy: Software. Peter Kalicz: Visualization, Validation, Software, Investigation. Zoltán Kern: Writing – review & editing, Writing – original draft, Validation, Investigation. Andras Donat Kovacs: Writing – original draft, Conceptualization. Eszter Tormáné Kovács: Writing – review & editing, Writing – original draft, Conceptualization. Laszlo Pasztor: Validation, Software, Data curation. Zsolt Kozma: Writing – review & editing, Writing – original draft, Visualization, Software, Methodology, Investigation, Conceptualization.

Acknowledgements

This research was supported by the NRDI Fund FK 20 (Grant No. 134547) and is a contribution to the activity of the Global Land Programme, the PAGES Floods Working Group and the NRDI University Research Scholarship Program EKÖP-2–4-II-BME-200 of the Budapest University of Technology and Economics.

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