Evaluation of the state of the “Yauza River Valley” landscape reserve

Abstract

Specially protected natural areas within large cities provide not only their main nature protection function, but also have an important recreational and educational value for people. At the same time, these ecosystems are affected by different kinds of man-made impacts of the urban environment, the excessive pressure of which may disturb the balance in the ecosystems. In order to minimize such impacts and maintain sustainable existence of specially protected natural areas, it is necessary to perform regular monitoring that can help analyze the state of these ecosystems and predict future changes in them. There are four main types of anthropogenic impacts that are mostly associated with high visitor attendance of protected areas: trampling and littering, contamination of water bodies and animal disturbance. Usually, the natural environment has a response to the negative impact on it. Methods of environmental control are based on this principle and can help to identify such impacts more accurately. In this work, the state of the “Yauza River Valley” landscape reserve was analyzed using various environmental control methods. A particular attention was paid to methods related to bioindication of natural ecosystems and based on the study of recreational pressures in the area.