Resources Environment and Information Engineering

One of the most dynamic natural processes on the planetary scale are changes in the global climate caused by changed chemical composition of atmosphere, with the corresponding demonstration of greenhouse effect. Global geosystem monitoring is most up-to-date and actually realizable on the scale of individual ecological regions. However, natural processes and events on the regional hierarchic level are characterized by the greatest diversity and high discreteness, therefore the regional response of global climatic changes inevitably takes the form of multiple reactions of vegetation, soils and landscapes as a whole to background climatic signals. The regional and local levels of geo-ecological prognoses still have not been developed enough due to insufficiency of factual material and methodical difficulties of the transfer of hydro-climatic prognosis from global to regional and local.The report expounds the main statements of original topo-ecological concept of prediction: “Global Changes on the Local Level”, as a basis of terrestrial  bio-ecological and geosystem monitoring under global anthropogenic climatic changes. This concept makes it possible to carry out local empirical simulation of the regional bioclimatic trend and thereby reveal the mechanisms of transmission of global and regional climate signals to the local level. Objects of research are forest and forest-steppe landscape-zonal systems of the headwater of the Volga River basin. They are included in the boreal ecotone of Northern Eurasia as the territory most sensitive to climate change and, accordingly, very favorable for the development of theory and methods of environmental monitoring. The conservation and reproduction of forest resources under changing climatic conditions at the southern boundary of temperate forest zone, where forest communities are in conditions close to critical, is one of the fundamental ecological problems. The strategic goal of monitoring research is to reveal the environmental potential of sustainablility of forest ecosystems in the context of modern global warming.

One of the most important ways to achieve the goals stipulated by the Paris (2015) Agreement on Climate Change is to solve a two-fold task: 1) the absorption of CO₂ by the forest communities from the atmosphere during global warming and 2) their adaptation to these climate changes, which should ensure the effectiveness of adsorption itself. Given report presents the regional experience of the numerical solution of this task. Calculations of the carbon balance of forest formations in the Oka-Volga River basin were carried out for global forecasts of moderate and extreme warming. The proposed index of labile elastic-plastic stability of forest ecosystems, which characterizes their isomorphic-restorative potential, was used as an indicator of adaptation.   For the territory of the Oka river basin  using multiple regression methods, a numerical experiment was conducted to assess the effect of the elastic stability of forest formations and the predicted climatic conditions on the carbon balance. A total of 11 linear equations were obtained (with a significance level of P <10^-6). In the upcoming 100-year forecast period, the overall elastic-plastic stability of forest formations should increase, and to the greatest extent with extreme warming. Accordingly, one should expect a significant increase in the ability of boreal forests to absorb greenhouse gases. A comparison of the carbon balance values ​​of forest formations obtained with initial (base) and final (final) stability indices gives an unambiguous picture of a significant increase in the adsorption capacity of boreal forests with an increase in their regenerative potential. A decisive contribution to increasing the adsorption of greenhouse gases is made by the growth of reforestation adaptation, which plays the role of a direct environmental factor.

The Pacific Ocean margin of Eurasia includes the age row (at the geologic time scale) of geoecotone objects which can be imagined by certain nodal stages of the evolutionary trajectory of exogenous landscape genesis in the continental biosphere. The reported strategy of scientific research is aimed at the establishment of zonal-regional and local regularities of landscape organization of insular and marginal-continental land in different morphotectonic and macroclimatic sectors of the Pacific Ocean mega-ecotone of Northern Eurasia, which is considered as a natural laboratory for studying the modern stage of development of the geographical envelope     The empirical statistical models of the island-arc stage of continental biosphere development in the North-West Pacific have been created by the example of experimental test ground of the active Mendeleev volcano on the Kunashir Island (the South Kuril Ridge). It was shown that on this initial stage local geomorphological and hydro-edaphic conditions created the centers of origin of diverse phytocoenological structures. An exceptionally high percentage of green mass in the structure of production results in the acceleration of the biological cycle as a factor of stability of forest community under unfavorable conditions of “cold” oceanicity. Geothermal energy induces rearrangement of the plant cover towards the increase in its flora- and phytocoenotic diversity to the detriment of biomass formation rate. The “climatically unjustified” but sufficiently stable sub-boreal forest ecosystems were formed, as well as the early stages of buffer forest communities.     The multidimensional empirical-statistical modeling of landscape connections in the marginal-continental sector of the Pacific Ocean mega ecotone has been performed based on an experimental site in the Lower By-Amur Region. The ecology of the boreal-forest landscape of the continental margin characterizes the mature stage of evolution of the continental biosphere. The regularities and causal mechanisms of the formation of buffer forest communities typical of ecotone systems have been represented more integrally. Forests of this phenomenal buffer flora are distinguished by extremely high parameters of structural and functional development and have reached the state approaching the evolutionary climax. The previously advanced concepts of the Pacific ecotone of Northern Eurasia as a focus of evolutionary processes in the continental biosphere have been confirmed.