A climate profile indicator based comparative analysis of climate change scenarios with regard to maize cultures

Using ecological data compiled from scientific literature on pest, pathogen and weed species characteristic in maize cultures in Hungary, we defined monthly climate profile indicators and applied them to complete a comparative analysis of the historical and modelled climate change scenario meteorological data of the city of Debrecen. Our results call attention to a drastic decline of the competitive ability of maize as compared to several C4 and especially C3 plants. According to the stricter scenarios, the frequency of potential pest and pathogen damage emergency situations will grow significantly by the end of the century.

A szovjetológiától az új intézményi közgazdaságtanig - töprengések két évtized távlatából = From Sovietology to the new institutional economics - meditations from a distance of two decades

A következőkben arra teszünk kísérletet, hogy összegezzük a közép- és a kelet-európai rendszerváltozások és az ezt tanulmányozók fordulatos történetét az elmúlt két évtizedben. Bemutatjuk, hogy a közgazdaságtan egy kevéssé fejlett ága miképp szembesült a tudományág egésze szempontjából is talán legnehezebb értelmezési és alkalmazási kérdéseket fölvető történelmi folyamattal. Megpróbáljuk feloldani azt a rejtvényt, hogy a főáramú megközelítés megismerése és alkalmazása miért nem hozott átütő eredményt sem a térség gazdaságainak, sem magának a tudományszaknak. Megvizsgáljuk a fokozatosság és a reformok kritikus tömege viszonyát. Végül kísérletet teszünk arra, hogy e sajátos szakterület elemzéséből adódó, tartósnak bizonyuló tételeket beépítsük a fenntartható fejlődés szélesebben értelmezett, immár főáramú megközelítéseibe. ___________ The article attempts to give an account of the changes of system in Central and Eastern Europe and of those who studied them in the last two decades. It shows how a less devel-oped branch of economics faced a historical process that posed possibly the most difficult questions of interpretation and application for the whole discipline. An attempt is made to discover why recognition and application of the mainstream approach failed to bring resounding success for the economies of the region or for economics itself. The author examines the relation between continuity and the critical weight of reforms. Finally, an attempt is made to advance durable propositions based on analysis of this specific field through now mainstream approaches in terms of sustainable development.

Climate change and plankton phenology in freshwater: current trends and future commitments

A solid body of empirical, experimental and theoretical evidence accumulated over recent years indicated that freshwater plankton experienced advance in phenology in response to climate change. Despite rapidly growing evidence for phenological changes, we still lack a comprehensive understanding of how climate change alters plankton phenology in freshwater. To overcome current limitations, we need to shed some light on trends and constraints in current research. The goal of this study is to identify current trends and gaps based on analysis of selected papers, by the help of which we can facilitate further advance in the field. We searched the literature for plankton phenology and confined our search to studies where climate change has been proposed to alter plankton phenology and rates of changes were quantified. We did not restrict our search for empirical ontributions; experimental and theoretical studies were considered as well. In the following we discuss the spatio-temporal setting of selected studies, contributions of different taxonomic groups, emerging methodological constraints, measures of phenological trends; and finally give a list of recommendations on how to improve our understanding in the field. The majority of studies were confined to deep lakes with a skewed geographical distribution toward Central Europe, where scientists have long been engaged in limnology. Despite these findings, recent studies suggest that plankton in running waters may experience change in phenology with similar magnitude. Average rate of advancement in phenology of freshwater plankton exceeded those of the marine plankton and the global average. Increasing study duration was not coupled either with increasing contribution of discontinuous data or with increasing rates of phenological changes. Future studies may benefit from i) delivering longterm data across scientific and political boundaries; ii) extending study sites to broader geographical areas with a more explicit consideration of running waters; iii) applying plankton functional groups; iv) increasing the application of satellite data to quantify phytoplankton bloom phenology; v) extending analyses of time series beyond the spring period; vi) using various metrics to quantify variation in phenology; vii) combining empirical, experimental and theoretical approaches; and last but not least viii) paying more attention to emergence dynamics, nonresponding species and trophic mismatch.