Abstracts

Forest Ecosystems

This is an experimental study involving GIS-based comparative analysis of geographic characteristics of succession runs and biodiversity of forest ecosystems between central Siberian vegetation zones. The study was conducted under IGBP-NES at field stations located in forest-tundra and northern and southern taiga along the Yenisei IGBP transect.

A multi-level GIS (Forests of Central Siberia) available at the Institute of Forest, Siberian Branch, Russian Academy of Sciences, was based upon in developing methodologies to assess forest ecosystem state and biodiversity at a local level successfully tested in the southern taiga subzone. The study was planned and completed as the second stage of a research program focusing on application of GIS technologies for comparison of forest community succession runs and biodiversity between different spatial levels.

Structurally, the regional ecological GIS consists of a spatial and an attributive databases and an analysis block. The spatial database is made up by several vector layers to cover thematic issues, such as geography, climate, classification, functioning, estimation, and prediction. The attributive database contains information on every contour (classification units, or legend, their distribution within vegetation zones, some ecosystem characteristics, etc.) delineated in thematic maps formalized in the GIS. The analysis block includes methods to superimpose different spatial and attributive data layers for identifying both natural and human-impacted forest dynamics. It also provides a comparative estimation of forest/environment interactions between vegetation zones, forest succession simulation and prediction, as well as calculation of integral forest state indexes.

In order to obtain geographic characteristics of forest succession, site condition types were determined within the study areas, as well as background succession runs. Estimates were also obtained of ecosystem and species diversity changes under different site conditions.

Vegetation zone-specific succession runs and changes of ecosystem and species diversity were established to be controlled by spatial variations of climatic (heat to moisture ratio), soil, and geomorphological factors. Succession-caused variability of biodiversity is higher than that related to climate only at early and middle stages of the natural forest regeneration process.

Note. Abstracts are published in author's edition

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