Сибирский лесной журнал (Apr 2021)

The role of forest in geoecological system of the Caucasian Mineral Waters

  • A. P. Kazankin

DOI
https://doi.org/10.15372/SJFS20210210
Journal volume & issue
Vol. 8, no. 2
pp. 103 – 119

Abstract

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The created forest plantations of 9424 hectares in the area of nutrition of mineral springs and around the resort towns of the Caucasian Mineral Waters excluded the pollution of ground and surface waters with fertilizers, created conditions for the growth of edible fungi, transferred the surface runoff to the soil, and prevented soil deflation. Soil solution from soils around Mashuk mountain, reaching hot mineral water, increases the formation of hydrogen sulfide by 6 times. The stands created conditions for the accumulation of iron, its migration to Lake Tambukan, which is necessary for the formation of healing mud. To normalize the natural conditions for the formation of healing waters, it is necessary to restore and preserve the native types of vegetation. It is revealed that native and preserved forests grew and grow on the slopes of the hydrographic system. The destroyed forests led to the formation of dangerous geological processes on the slopes and reduced the permeability of soils in the feeding area of the Tithonian stage. Protected are the indigenous subalpine meadows that covered and cover the watershed plateau-like surfaces in the upper reaches of the Berezovaya, Alikonovka and Dzhinalskiy ridge rivers. The Pasture Ridge is a barrier for broad-leaved species, and the upper (southern) climatic boundary of the oak Quercus L. does not exceed 940 m. To the south of the ridge, pine-small-leaved forests naturally grow. To normalize the nutritional conditions of the Tithonian stage it is necessary to restore planted and destroyed stands on the southern slope of the Kabardinsky ridge. Here, the flow (draining the underground waters of the Tithonian and Valanginian) should be directed outside the local underground drainage basin along one of the terraces created earlier for water infiltration by the rocks of the Tithonian. The absence of forest on three diapir mountains is explained by weakly expressed magmatogenic folds and the other forms of relief, as well as by the phytocenotic isolation of meadow and steppe vegetation.

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