Global climatic changes, as well as local environmental disturbances, including anthropogenic impact, lead to significant changes in the functions performed by plants and soil biota. Changes in natural ecosystems and their degradation under the influence of the anthropogenic factor is one of the most important problems of our time, especially close to urbanization centers (e.g. Moscow or Nizhny Novgorod). Changes in the structure of communities lead to such negative consequences as the introduction of invasive species (for example, Sosnowsky's hogweed or red roadside slug), a decrease in the level of socio-economic functions of ecosystems (the productivity of berry-growers, the abundance of game animals, recreational value, etc.) and the loss of general ecological community functions. This project involves the study of hemiboreal ecosystems of different levels of disturbance within the framework of a functional approach. This approach has been actively developed in ecology over the past 25 years and is based not on the
taxonomic diversity of communities, but on the diversity of states of the so-called functional traits (characteristics that affect the fitness and/or response of an individual to environmental changes). Functional diversity is the key concept of the approach, which makes it possible to identify the mechanisms of community formation and ecosystem functioning. It is known that an increase in the functional diversity of plant communities improves the performance of most ecosystem services, including those associated with obtaining food of “wild” origin, erosion control, and an increase in the diversity of wildlife in the territory. The most important function performed by plants is also the formation of primary production, the
accumulation of carbon in the phytomass, the quantity and quality of litter. The functioning of plant communities is closely related to edaphic conditions, as well as soil-inhabiting organisms (fungi, bacteria, invertebrates). Soil biota, forming complex detrital food webs, also plays a key role in maintaining various ecosystem functions: soil formation and fertility, destruction of
Заявка № 23-74-01143 Страница 3 из 33dead organic matter, nutrient cycling, climate bioregulation, as well as stimulating or inhibiting plant growth and productivity.
Traditional approaches to assessing the degree of ecosystem disturbance, as well as developing measures for subsequent restoration, as a rule, are based on taxonomic diversity and abundance indicators of different groups, but do not take into account ecosystem functions performed by vegetation cover and soil biota. Thus, in the absence of visible changes in the
taxonomic composition, a significant reduction in functional diversity can occur. Moreover, there is no integral assessment of the functioning of the entire ecosystem, since vegetation and soil biota, and the functions they perform, are usually considered separately, without taking into account possible interactions and cause-and-effect relationships. This project is aimed at filling these gaps in knowledge about the functioning of terrestrial ecosystems and is aimed at
developing a unified approach to assessing the functional diversity of vegetation and soil biota along the anthropogenic disturbance gradient in coniferous-deciduous forests (typical biome communities) in the central part of European Russia. However, there are no comprehensive studies of the functional diversity of vascular plants and soil biota for the forest biomes of Russia. In global scientific litreture, studies of the functional diversity of vascular plants (within plant communities) of disturbed ecosystems are quite widely represented, but complex studies of each ecosystem scomponents, especially considering the aboveground and underground communities, are currently rare. We hypothesize that: 1. with an increase in the degree of plant communities disturbance, its functional diversity of vascular plants will decrease to a greater extent than the functional diversity of soil biota as a more static component of ecosystems; 2. functional richness in plant communities will be the higher in forests with medium level of disturbance, and functional evenness will be maximum in low-disturbed communities due to the absence of the ruderal component of the flora and lesser heterogeneity of microhabitats; We assume a significantly lower functional diversity in communities formed as a result of forest plantations, including old-growth ones, than in unidisturbed zonal plant communities.
