Long-term ecology and conservation of the Kungur forest-steppe (pre-Urals, Russia): case study Spasskaya Gora

Abstract

The Kungur forest-steppe is the northernmost outpost of European forest-steppe, located in the western pre-Urals within the boreal climatic zone. The co-existence of boreal, nemoral and steppe species with relicts and endemics results in a high plant diversity, making it an important biodiversity hotspot. Under current climate change and strong agricultural impacts, the Kungur forest-steppe is rapidly degrading. In order to develop sustainable management strategies, we studied the vegetation history over the last 3500 years in the natural reserve area Spasskaya Gora. Palynological data indicate that the territory of Spasskaya Gora was largely covered by hemiboreal forests with high proportion of elm during the late Holocene. An opening of the vegetation strongly correlates with erosion, both indicating anthropogenic activities such as lumbering, agriculture, grazing and hay making. The modern Pinus and Betula dominated forests combined with large areas dominated by grasses and herbs appear in the last 300 years and caused by human activity. The data support the ‘anthropogenic’ hypothesis of the Kungur forest-steppe development, suggesting that Pleistocene steppe was replaced by hemiboreal forests during the Holocene. Steppe elements survived on exposed rocks. The recent forest-steppe landscapes dominated by pioneer birch and poplar were formed due to anthropogenic deforestation. With respect to nature conservation, our data demonstrate that prohibition of any anthropogenic activities at Spasskaya Gora will lead to loss of diversity of steppe assemblages over the mid-term. We emphasize that conservation of the high plant diversity of the Kungur forest-steppe must include disturbance factors in the form of selective lumbering, prescribed burning, moderate grazing or traditional mowing.

Genotyping-by-sequencing reveals range expansion of Adonis vernalis (Ranunculaceae) from Southeastern Europe into the zonal Euro-Siberian steppe

“…The Late Pleistocene culminated in maximum cold and aridity in the Late Valdai (= Sartan = Late Weichselian) Glaciation about 16 ka, with conditions of cold deserts in southern Western Siberia 36 , 37 . Postglacial (re)colonization of today’s Western Siberian forest-steppe zone 2 could have occurred from the west (surroundings of the Ural Mountains) 38 and/or from small-scale refugia south of the present distribution range 39 .…”

“…The Late Pleistocene culminated in maximum cold and aridity in the Late Valdai (= Sartan = Late Weichselian) Glaciation about 16 ka, with conditions of cold deserts in southern Western Siberia 36,37 . Postglacial (re)colonization of today's Western Siberian forest-steppe zone 2 could have occurred from the west (surroundings of the Ural Mountains) 38 and/or from small-scale refugia south of the present distribution range 39 It may be surprising that a plant like Adonis vernalis should have colonized the vast area east of the Ural Mountains within a few millennia, because its dispersal ability should be limited, if one assumes only barochory (with comparatively large nutlets) and myrmecochory 20,24 as dispersal modes. This would make the time required to colonize such a large area very high (perhaps several 100 ka 40 ) even assuming a continuous habitat.…”

Millennial scale perspective on biodiversity conservation of the forest-steppe ecotone in Europe

“…Also, the forest-steppe ecotone was transformed by land use. While Neolithic to Iron age cultures reduced the forest cover of the ecotone somewhat, the transformation to a largely open agrarian landscape occurred only between 500 BCE in the Lower Danube region (Feurdean et al 2021) and the 17th century in the Kungur forest-steppe (Shumilovskikh et al 2019b(Shumilovskikh et al , 2021. In eastern Europe, this deforestation likely shifted the ecotone to the North and West so that areas that are currently mapped as forest-steppe were forest-covered before extensive land-use started (Shumilovskikh et al 2018).…”

“…A new pollen record documenting the vegetation composition in the Kungur region over the last 3400 years (Shumilovskikh et al 2021) The oldest samples dating to the Bronze age document the presence of humans, who created larger open areas using fire. At the end of this settlement phase, the forest recovered quickly.…”

Forest Fire Risk Zone Mapping of Aalital Rural Municipality, Dadeldhura District, Nepal

“…LULC is considered to be the most important factor for the spreading of fire. A huge amount of degraded land, greater slope, human activities like grazing make the area highly susceptible to forest fire [25]- [27]. Thus, LULC analysis was carried out by categorizing it into nine different land use classes through the provided data of ICIMOD having a spatial resolution of 30m.…”