Reed die-back and conservation of small reed birds at Lake Neusiedl, Austria

Fate of nutrients and trace contaminants in a large shallow soda lake. Spatial gradients and underlying processes from the tributary river to the reed belt

“…57,68 Enhanced degradation, however, may in turn influence and aggravate the oxygen situation and even the reed structure, since prolonged anoxic phases may cause reed die-back through the production of toxic substances. 69 As a consequence, reed structure and habitat quality can be significantly altered, 70 and – via increased wind fetch and changed flow patterns – may in turn restore the importance of oxygen input from the atmosphere and through channels from the open lake. Similar antagonistic effects exist with respect to pH: while high pH values and the enormous surface area on the turbidity particles ensure very effective decomposition of organic material, exactly these conditions are not available in the reed belt.…”

Spatial Analysis of Intra-Annual Reed Ecosystem Dynamics at Lake Neusiedl Using RGB Drone Imagery and Deep Learning

“…We extracted the vegetated areas of each orthomosaic using the results from the land cover classification. For these areas, the Green Chromatic Coordinates (GCC) vegetation index was calculated from the red-green-blue (RGB) colour channel information using the formula in Equation (5). Of the various vegetation indices available for RGB data, we chose GCC due to its effectiveness in suppressing changes in scene illumination [39], which occurred in several orthomosaics.…”

“…None of the current studies of Lake Neusiedl [5,[8][9][10][11][12] have investigated the spatial and temporal pattern of the three wetland classes (reed, water, and sediment) within one year, though they have often compared the extent of the reed belt between two years, for example, 1979 and 2008. Our study is the first to identify open sediment areas as a separate land cover class in the reed belt.…”

“…Reed shoots are a food source for herbivores, and in an aquatic setting reed stands provide a spawning ground and nursery for fish [3], prevent erosion, and stabilize the strength of the bank [4]. The reed belt of Lake Neusiedl is the second largest coherent reed ecosystem in Europe after the Danube Delta, and for nature conservation reasons it is a very important habitat for many protected bird species [5]. Lake Neusiedl is a long-term ecological research (LTER) site contributing to a pan-European research network seeking to better understand the structures and functions of ecosystems (https://lter-austria.at, accessed on 5 August 2023) [6].…”

“…Márkus et al [12] recognized a strong degradation of the Hungarian reed belt due to damage caused by the harvesting machines, which were called die-back sites in [13]; these were observed in the Austrian part, though to a lesser extent, in [9]. One study from 2018/2019 used Sentinel-2b data to monitor the age of reed stands, finding that the dominant age class (especially in the eastern reed belt) was areas older than 14 years [5].…”