Puszta

The Pannonian Steppe is a variety of grassland ecosystems found in the Pannonian Basin.

The Pannonian Steppe is found in modern-day Austria, Bulgaria, Hungary, Romania, Serbia and Slovakia. In Hungary it is known as Puszta.

The Puszta (Hungarian pronunciation: [ˈpustɒ]) is a grassland biome on the Great Hungarian Plain (Alföld) around the River Tisza in the eastern part of Hungary as well as on the western part of Hungary and in the Austrian Burgenland. The Hungarian puszta is an exclave of the Eurasian Steppe.

It covers a total area of ca. 50,000 km² (20,000 mi²). The characteristic landscape is composed of treeless plains, saline steppes and salt lakes, and includes scattered sand dunes, low, wet forests and freshwater marshes along the floodplains of the ancient rivers.

The word Puszta means "plains", a vast wilderness of shrubs and grassland. The name comes from an adjective of the same form, meaning "waste, barren, bare". Puszta is ultimately a Slavic loanword in Hungarian (compare Serbo-Croatian and Bulgarian pust and Polish pusty, both meaning bare or empty).

The climate is continental. Landscape is widely cultivated, the original Puszta landscape now being found only in a few places, for example in Hortobágy National Park.

300 species of birds are found here.

The Čenkovská steppe near Mužla is the only steppe National nature reserve in Slovakia. The protected area declared in 1951 covers a total of 83 hectares.

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