\n By Justin Spike with AP\n<\/p>\n
\n Published on
\n 29\/12\/2025 – 12:30 GMT+1\n <\/p>\n
Oszk\u00e1r Nagyap\u00e1ti climbs to the bottom of a sandy pit on his land on the Great Hungarian Plain and digs into the soil with his hand, looking for a sign of groundwater that in recent years has been in accelerating retreat.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s much worse, and it\u2019s getting worse year after year,\u201d he says as cloudy liquid slowly seeps into the hole. \u201dWhere did so much water go? It\u2019s unbelievable.\u201d<\/p>\n
Nagyap\u00e1ti has watched with distress as the region in southern Hungary<\/a>, once an important site for agriculture, has become increasingly parched and dry. Where a variety of crops and grasses once filled the fields, today there are wide cracks in the soil and growing sand dunes more reminiscent of the Sahara Desert than Central Europe.<\/p>\n What’s behind Hungary’s emerging ‘semiarid’ region?<\/p>\n The region, known as the Homokh\u00e1ts\u00e1g, has been described by some studies as semiarid – a distinction more common in parts of Africa, the American Southwest or Australian Outback – and is characterised by very little rain, dried-out wells and a water table plunging ever deeper underground.<\/p>\n In a 2017 paper in European Countryside, a scientific journal, researchers cited \u201cthe combined effect of climatic changes, improper land use and inappropriate environmental management\u201d as causes for the Homokh\u00e1ts\u00e1g’s aridification, a phenomenon the paper called unique in this part of the continent.<\/p>\n Fields that in previous centuries would be regularly flooded by the Danube and Tisza Rivers have, through a combination of climate change-related droughts<\/a> and poor water retention practices, become nearly unsuitable for crops and wildlife.<\/p>\n \u2018Water guardians\u2019 are on a mission to save the region<\/p>\n Now a group of farmers and other volunteers, led by Nagyap\u00e1ti, are trying to save the region and their lands from total desiccation using a resource for which Hungary is famous: thermal water<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u201cI was thinking about what could be done, how could we bring the water back or somehow create water in the landscape,” says Nagyap\u00e1ti. “There was a point when I felt that enough is enough. We really have to put an end to this. And that’s where we started our project to flood some areas to keep the water<\/a> in the plain.\u201d<\/p>\n Along with the group of volunteer \u201cwater guardians\u201d, Nagyap\u00e1ti began negotiating with authorities and a local thermal spa last year, hoping to redirect the spa’s overflow water – which would usually pour unused into a canal – onto their lands. The thermal water is drawn from very deep underground.<\/p>\n Could thermal water be used to mimic natural flooding?<\/p>\n According to the water guardians’ plan, the water, cooled and purified, would be used to flood a 2.5-hectare low-lying field – a way of mimicking the natural cycle of flooding that channelising the rivers had ended.<\/p>\n \u201cWhen the flooding is complete and the water recedes, there will be 2.5 hectares of water surface in this area,” Nagyap\u00e1ti says. “This will be quite a shocking sight in our dry region.\u201d<\/p>\n A 2024 study by Hungary\u2019s E\u00f6tv\u00f6s Lor\u00e1nd University showed that unusually dry layers of surface-level air in the region had prevented any arriving storm fronts from producing precipitation. Instead, the fronts would pass through without rain, and result in high winds that dried out the topsoil<\/a> even further.<\/p>\n Artificial flooding could also create a microclimate<\/p>\n The water guardians hoped that by artificially flooding certain areas, they wouldn’t only raise the groundwater level but also create a microclimate through surface evaporation that could increase humidity, reduce temperatures and dust and have a positive impact on nearby vegetation.<\/p>\n Tam\u00e1s T\u00f3th, a meteorologist in Hungary, says that because of the potential impact such wetlands<\/a> can have on the surrounding climate, water retention \u201cis simply the key issue in the coming years and for generations to come, because climate change does not seem to stop.<\/p>\n “The atmosphere continues to warm up<\/a>, and with it the distribution of precipitation, both seasonal and annual, has become very hectic, and is expected to become even more hectic in the future,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n \u2018Immense happiness\u2019: Water guardians put plans into action<\/p>\n Following another hot, dry summer<\/a> this year, the water guardians blocked a series of sluices along a canal, and the repurposed water from the spa began slowly gathering in the low-lying field.<\/p>\n After a couple of months, the field had nearly been filled. Standing beside the area in early December, Nagyap\u00e1ti says that the shallow marsh that has formed “may seem very small to look at it, but it brings us immense happiness here in the desert.\u201d<\/p>\n He says the added water will have a \u201chuge impact\u201d within a roughly 4-kilometre radius, “not only on the vegetation, but also on the water balance of the soil. We hope that the groundwater level will also rise.\u201d<\/p>\n Hungary has appointed a drought task force<\/p>\n Persistent droughts in the Great Hungarian Plain have threatened desertification<\/a>, a process where vegetation recedes because of high heat and low rainfall. Weather-damaged crops have dealt significant blows to the country\u2019s overall gross domestic product, prompting Prime Minister Viktor Orb\u00e1n<\/a> to announce this year the creation of a \u201cdrought task force\u201d to deal with the problem.<\/p>\n After the water guardians’ first attempt to mitigate the growing problem in their area, they said they experienced noticeable improvements in the groundwater level, as well as an increase of flora and fauna near the flood site.<\/p>\n The group, which has grown to more than 30 volunteers, would like to expand the project to include another flooded field, and hopes their efforts could inspire similar action by others to conserve the most precious resource.<\/p>\n \u201cThis initiative can serve as an example for everyone, we need more and more efforts like this,” Nagyap\u00e1ti says. “We retained water from the spa, but retaining any kind of water, whether in a village or a town, is a tremendous opportunity for water replenishment.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"By Justin Spike with AP Published on 29\/12\/2025 – 12:30 GMT+1 Oszk\u00e1r Nagyap\u00e1ti climbs to the bottom of a sandy pit…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":376936,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[47],"tags":[184292,15229,192,37520,79,52074,282,137259],"class_list":{"0":"post-376935","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-environment","8":"tag-desertification","9":"tag-drought","10":"tag-environment","11":"tag-farmers","12":"tag-science","13":"tag-viktor-orban","14":"tag-water","15":"tag-water-resources"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/376935","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=376935"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/376935\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/376936"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=376935"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=376935"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=376935"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}