Mountain-Taiga Station as an object for geo-environmental integrated monitoring of the mountain-valley area
Mariya M. Surzhik & Vladimir I. Oznobikhin
Federal Scientific Center of the East Asia Terrestrial Biodiversity FEB RAS, Vladivostok, 690022, Russia
The Far Eastern Federal District includes a phase of intensive settlement and exploitation of natural resources. Statements and actions on the high Presidential, Parliamentary and Governmental levels confirm this. Such activities show the entire historical experience of humankind, accompanied by a variety of disfunctional natural environmental components. This will lead to a variety of environmental consequences if we don`t track the real situation, fix and assess the adverse consequences of such activities.
The Mountain-Taiga Station is the target of a research for monitoring the environmental conditions in the mountain-valley landscapes of South of the Far-East. In this territory, there are landscape units of varying degrees of disturbance and are in the process of recovery.
When the of Mountain-Taiga Station was set up, soil and vegetation cover were represented by the areas either in their natural state and anthropogenically modified, including in the process of degradation.
The first soil research was done by M.A. Zhukova in 1937 and had the character of a reconnaissance.
The basic idea M. A. Zhukova soil research was the establishment of a stationary observation for soil cover, but was not implemented (Zhukova, 1946). However, the obtained soil data had an influence on the development of Botanical studies, including in the field of medicinal plants.
Monitoring the status of vegetation became then systematic, but soil testing was carried out only locally: for experimental plots (Nechaeva, 1966, 1967, 1971) and for Arboretum (Prilutskiy, 1970, 1973, 1974, 1976; Bessarabova, 1974, 1981). Many of the obtained data were not published and went lost. Over the 85 years the Station area and its status have changed - the area has increased to 4542 hectares, and has acquired the status of Special Protected Natural Areas. Numerous and valuable research in the field of stationary studying of plant resources, conducted by the staff of the Mountain-Taiga Station, will require comprehensive monitoring of soil and vegetation cover. Therefore, obtaining new data on the soil condition and soil mapping is important for obtaining reliable data on long-term changes of ecosystems under the influence of natural and anthropogenic factors.
In 2017 a soil-geobotanical survey has been repeated to obtain new data on the state of soil and vegetation cover. The author's original soil map of the Mountain-Taiga Station in the scale of 1:25,000, reflecting the current state of the soil, was created. The map of the vegetation cover was created. Soil and plant cover of the territories of the Station, including anthropogenic, has undergone changes in the direction of recovery. Results show cessation of the soil erosion, restoration and increase in the number of natural vegetation species.
These researches are important to study and evaluate the degree of degradation or restoration of natural and anthropogenically transformed lands of Southern Primorye.