From May 16 to May 19, 2019, we travelled to the White Carpathians for the first time, which is a low mountain range in the western part of the Carpathian arc on the Slovakian border. We were invited by Ivana Jongepierová, who, together with her colleagues from the White Carpathian Nature Park administration, has for many years maintained large areas of mountain meadows and restored them through renaturation measures on former arable sites. We performed vegetation surveys and assessed the habitats protected under the Habitats Directive (German FFH) in these exceptionally species-rich meadows of the White Carpathians with their many orchid species as well as in the structurally rich beech and oak forests. We also looked at the results of an EU LIFE project on the renaturation of sand habitats.

The excursion is included in the “Kurssystem Botanik und Vegetationskunde” of the master's degree program in Nature Conservation and Landscape Planning. 15 students can participate. If you are interested, please contact Sandra Dullau via email.

Excursion Lead: Prof. Sabine Tischew, Sandra Dullau.