USING GIS-TECHNOLOGIES FOR DETECTING KEY PLANT AREAS OF THE CENTRAL PART OF OREL REGION

Abstract

Today, the preservation of individual species and entire ecosystems is an urgent problem. It is obvious that there is a necessity to establish areas of great importance for endangered species, their habitats and plant diversity in general.The purpose of this study is to reveal Key Plant Areas in the central part of Orel Region including 9 administrative districts. In 2016 for the first time the research of the flora of this territory was conducted with the help of grid mapping method. The studied territory was included into 95 cells, the area of which was from 101 square kilometers in the north of the region, to 108.2 square kilometers in the south.Basing on the analysis of the floristic and geobotanical data obtained as aresult of field research in 2016, 55 Key Plant Areas of the central part of Orel Region were identified in the MapInfo GIS. The most widely represented territories among the 55 revealed ones are the areas with prevailing natural vegetation of the zonal type: meadow-steppe (34.6 %), forest (23.6 %), forest-steppe (34.6 %), and a small part of the allocated territories (7.2 %) is intrazonal types of vegetation – wetlands (3.6 %) and flood meadows (3.6 %).Among the identified 55 Key Plant Areas there are six nature monuments: one hydrological and five botanical. In the allocated territories, seventy-one new locations of 15 species of vascular plants mentioned in the Red Book of Orel Region (2007) have been found.

Keywords

• Orel Region
• GIS MapInfo
• Key Plant Areas
• natural monuments
• rare plants