Bölöni J., Molnár Zs., Horváth F. & Illyés E. (2008) Naturalness-based habitat quality of the Hungarian (semi-)natural habitats. Acta Botanica Hungarica> 50(Suppl.), pp. 149-159.
Effective conservation of (semi-)natural habitats needs knowledge on the naturalness, the actual quality of a habitat or vegetation patch. Nevertheless, there are only a few studies have been published in this topic so far. During the MÉTA project, between 2002–2005, we have surveyed the semi-natural vegetation of Hungary and assessed the naturalness of the predefined 86 habitat types. In this paper we present the country scale analysis on the naturalness of these habitat types. We compared the naturalness of the individual habitat types and also habitat groups, as well as the naturalness of the physical macroregions of Hungary. Euhydrophyte habitats and habitats deserving high abiotic stress are the most natural ones, while secondary shrublands, uncharacteristic forests and grasslands are the less natural. For the forest habitats we compared and discussed the naturalness values given by the MÉTA mappers and the values gained in the TERMERD (assessing forest naturalness in Hungary) project. In case of regions, Kisalföld has the lowest naturalness, and surprisingly the quality of the Alföld and the Középhegység is nearly equal if we consider only the remained vegetation.