ABSTRACT
The great decline of the area of alluvial meadows, as well as other wet meadows, occurred across the whole Europe, and was accompanied by the decrease of ecological value of the remaining. For example, in England, there were historically ca. 1 200 000 ha of wet grasslands, nowadays only app. 220 000 ha remained (Treweek et al. 1997). In Hungary, they declined from app. 600 000 ha in 1950 to 200 000 ha in 1990 (Joyce & Wade 1998).
