Anthropogenic Vegetation in the River Valley Amalat

Abstract

The article presents the results of a research study of anthropogenic affects of gold mining on forest landscapes in Northern Transbaikalia, Russia and processes of natural reclamation of vegetation cover of the disturbed areas. The study area is located northwest of the Maliy Amalat River, which flows along the Vitim Plateau; in the floodplains of its two tributaries the Aunik River and the Bagdarin River. It is an area where a large number of alluvial gold deposits have been discovered. Some of these deposits are currently being developed, some have already been explored, and some have been abandoned. The authors consider the current state of vegetation cover in a key area of the Amalat River basin, near villages of Malovsky and Bagdarin. The problem of natural resources development and conservation is becoming extremely important for the area under study because open-pit gold mining methods that are used here drastically change the environment and affect water, land and forest resources.

Ecological scales of indicator plants in an industrial region

“…The thematic direction of establishing the ecological valence of a species to certain ecological parameters is applicable to many processes of plant life: dispersal, appearance in new territories [24], disappearance [17], appearance of new species, appearance of temporary structures for survival [5,20] or somatic neoplasms that are incompatible with survival [7,10]. This entire range of adaptations allows us to consider plant organisms as informative indicators of the state of the environment, which is also indicated by other authors [4,9,13,26].…”

“…Plant organisms constantly depend on environmental factors (ecological factors) and are forced to adapt [4,5]. Such changes form phenotypic series, which are largely correlated with genotypic transformations [6,7].…”