Assessment of Anthropogenic Pressure on the Volga Federal District Territory Using River Basin Approach

Abstract

The analysis of the geoecological state of basin geosystems was carried out by evaluation of the anthropogenic pressure on the basin. As indicators that directly or indirectly reflect the anthropogenic impact, the following were used: population density in the basin, density of the road network, and agricultural development of the basin territory. The spatial and statistical distributions of indicators were analyzed after the indicators were brought to a unified scale (transformation, normalization). The integral indicator of anthropogenic pressure, calculated as a linear combination of individual variables, was ranked to six categories of anthropogenic pressure: “absent”, “very low”, “low”, “moderate”, “high”, and “very high”. Using the developed methodology and prepared geodata, for the first time at scale of 1:200,000, the territory of the Volga Federal District was zoned according to the anthropogenic pressure on each river basin. Basins with a high and very high pressure are concentrated around large cities. Most of the basins belonging to the categories of low and moderate anthropogenic pressure are located in the forest-steppe and steppe zones with maximal agricultural development. Basins with zero and very low pressure lie in the north of the study area, in the forest zone, and in the southern Ural.

New Sets of Primers for DNA Identification of Non-Indigenous Fish Species in the Volga-Kama Basin (European Russia)

“…Identification of NIS of fish in Europe is a very important problem, because recently we have observed significant changes in indigenous fish communities in many river basins (i.e., due to creation of a system of artificial reservoirs, which have led to more favorable conditions for a range expansion in a number of aquatic organisms). The Volga River basin (including its largest affluent, the Kama River), one of the largest river basin in Europe (with 1.36 million km 2 [17][18][19]), is densely populated, intensively used and is subject to a strong anthropogenic transformation [20][21][22]. A cascade of dams was created during Soviet times; several large reservoirs were formed in different portions of the basin [23].…”

Rivers in the Focus of Natural-Anthropogenic Situations at Catchments

“…The territory of Russia in total includes about 2.5 million rivers and streams, of which 57 have a length of more than 1000 km and about 50 rivers with a catchment area that exceeds 100,000 km 2 . The average long-term water reserves in Lake Baikal are 23,000 km 3 [6], which is about 19% of the world's fresh lake water reserves.…”

“…The authors of four papers presented by Russian researchers used different-scale levels of the basin organization of the territory when choosing their study area. Accordingly, river basin problems have been characterized at levels such as a group of four large river basins of Eastern Siberia [5], parts of two large river basins within the Volga Federal District with detail down to the level of small rivers [3], 70 key areas in three river basins located in three natural zones of the East European Plain [4], and small and medium rivers [2].…”

“…However, 84% of surface waters are concentrated east of the Urals, that is, in the Asian part of the country (77% of the country's territory). This is due to the fact that the most full-flowing rivers (in terms of average annual runoff), as shown by the Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment of the Russian Federation [6], are located in Asian Russia: Yenisei (635 km 3 ), Lena (537 km 3 ), Ob' (405 km 3 ), Amur (378 km 3 ), except for the Volga (238 km 3 ).…”

“…Mukharamova et al [3] study the geoecological state of the basin geosystems of the Volga Federal District, including 68,787 basins with an average area about 15 km 2 using an integrative approach to evaluating the anthropogenic pressure on the basin. Using the integral indicator of anthropogenic transformation of the catchment area, which was ranked to six categories of anthropogenic pressure, the authors performed mapping and zoning according to the anthropogenic pressure on each river basin.…”