The role of soil and plant cover as drivers of soil macrofauna of the Dnipro River floodplain ecosystems

Abstract

Floodplain ecosystems are hotspots of biological diversity and perform important ecosystem functions in the landscape. The key to understanding the sustainability of ecosystem function is knowledge of the relationships between ecosystem components. The article reveals the role of morphological and physical properties of soil, as well as phytoindication of environmental factors as drivers of biological diversity of soil macrofauna of protected ecosystems of the Dnipro River floodplain. The studies were conducted in the forest floodplain ecosystems of the “Dnipro-Orilskiy” Nature Reserve. The studies of morphological properties of soils allowed us to identify the representatives of two reference groups: Fluvisol and Gleysol. The soil physical property data were subjected to principal component analysis, which extracted four principal components whose eigenvalues exceeded unity and described 79.9% of the variation in traits. The principal components of variation in soil physical properties and phytoindication assessments of environmental factors were used as predictors of the community structure of soil macrofauna. These predictors were able to explain 29.6% of the community variation. Physical soil properties are most important as a driver of soil macrofauna. The morphological properties of the soil and phytoindicator assessments are able to explain a much smaller part of the community variation. The pure influence of the predictors is small, indicating that they interact significantly in influencing soil animals. The results obtained have implications for the development of optimal strategies for floodplain ecosystem management and biodiversity conservation.

Visual evaluation of soil structure in low‐intensity land use systems of steppe zone of Ukraine

“…Moreover, higher bioturbation activity in forest soils extends to deeper genetic horizons and is clearly noticeable in the 25–50 cm layer. The type of forest vegetation largely impacts the species composition and abundance of soil macrofauna (Kooch et al, 2018; Kunakh et al, 2023; Visscher et al, 2023; Zhukov et al, 2019); this makes the bioturbation activity of earthworms one of the key factors of soil structural quality (Guimarães et al, 2011; Piron et al, 2017; Yakovenko & Zhukov, 2021). Accordingly, forest soils had higher structural quality in terms of visual structure evaluation in the layers of 0–25 cm (Sq score was 1.31–1.34) and 25–50 cm (Ssq score was <2).…”

Steppe vegetation islands in the gully landscape system: Hemeroby, naturalness and phytoindication of ecological regimes

“…The instrumental methods of measuring the moisture content and mineral forms of nitrogen in the soil also indicate that as the water content increases, the concentration of nitrogen in the soil also increases (Zhang & Wienhold, 2002). The relationship between aeration and the content of mineral forms of nitrogen compounds is complex (Kunakh et al, 2023). Thus, under conditions of excessive moisture, the content of ammonium nitrogen in the soil is not related to the level of aeration, but the content of nitrate nitrogen was inversely related to the degree of filling the space of the soil pores with water (Girsang et al, 2020).…”

The importance of terrain factors in the spatial variability of plant cover diversity in a steppe gully

“…The class Robinietea includes communities of spontaneous urban woody vegetation and various artificial plantations (Dubina et al, 2019). The artificial tree plantations are located in locations characterized by a high level of erosion risks (Kunakh et al, 2023). In general, their creation was aimed specifically at protecting against erosion, which can explain this feature.…”

“…Modern geoinformation technologies make it possible to determine the amount of solar radiation reaching the terrain surface using a digital elevation model. The aim of the article was to identify the role of relief factors in terms of topographic wetness index, erosion index, and solar radiation in the spatial variability of the vegetation diversity of a steppe gully (Kunakh et al, 2023).…”