Assessment of the anthropogenic transformation of post-forest vegetation in the village of Guzeripl and its environs (the Republic of Adygea, the Western Caucasus) based on the composition and structure of complexes of dominant species

Abstract

Definition of the ceno-flora or regional flora in the cenosis, the proportion of species resistant or non-resistant to impacts has become widespread among the methods of indicating disturbances in vegetation cover.However, such studies, if they are conducted on a large spatial scale, require significant time and do not imply spatial detailing of the results. It is suggested that for several reasons it would be useful to use dominant species to solve this problem. The goal of the research is to demonstrate the possibilities of one of the variants of this approach using the example of vegetation of a small settlement (the mountain village of Guzeripl). It consists in studying the composition (level of synanthropization) and structure of species complexes that dominate communities in relatively large visually homogeneous areas of the terrain (0.15–0.2 ha). The results have shown that, on average, the highest level of synanthropization (transformation) is characteristic of dominant complexes of young fallow lands, a lower level of wastelands and roadsides, and a significantly lower level of old fallow lands and hayfields. In general, communities with a moderate degree of disturbance predominate in the study area. The results also indicate that the impact of anthropogenic factors on areas of vegetation leads to changes not only in the composition of dominant complexes, but also in their structure, the parameters of which can be considered as an additional tool for indicating anthropogenic disturbances.

Keywords

• vegetation cover
• dominant complexes
• projective cover
• anthropogenic disturbances
• synanthropization
• the western caucasus