LANDSCAPE FEATURES AND ECOLOGICAL ASSESSMENT OF NATURAL ECOSYSTEMS ON THE WHITE SEA KARELIAN AND POMOR COASTS

• Published in: Proceedings of the Karelian Research Centre of the Russian Academy of Sciences
• Main Authors: Andrey Gromtsev, Olga Bakhmet, Vladimir Karpin, Yulia Tkachenko, Andrej Tuyunen, Nikolai Petrov
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English; Russian
• Published: Karelian Research Centre of the Russian Academy of Sciences 2019
• Subjects: coastal landscapes; mires; soils; forests; coenotic diversity; ecosystem vulnerability; insular plant communities; Science; Q; White Sea; Murmansk; Arkhangelsk; Fennoscandia; karelian; Republic of Karelia; taiga
• Online Access: https://doi.org/10.17076/eco957; https://doaj.org/article/6942b5df661b48548de5050b824ba49f

The White Sea coastline within the Republic of Karelia stretches for ca. 380 km. All of the adjacent area belongs to the White Sea Lowland, and the coastline is the eastern fringe of Fennoscandia. The Karelian part of the White Sea coast falls into two parts termed Karelian Coast (from the border with the Murmansk Region to the Kem River) and Pomor Coast (from the Kem River to the border with the Arkhangelsk Region). The Pomor Coast partially extends into the Arkhangelsk Region. The land is generally quite uniform, only with a differentiation into three types of the north-taiga landscape, which differ in landforms, their genesis, Quaternary sediments, spatial coverage of mires, and prevalent types of forest habitats. The paper offers short multi-sided descriptions of the landscape types roughly structured as follows: 1) geographic position and distribution; 2) specific traits of: а) genetic landforms and Quaternary sediments; b) soil cover and paludification; c) forest cover and forest plant communities; 3) representativeness for coenotic diversity and forest cover integrity; 4) vulnerability of natural ecosystems to human impact. Vulnerability assessments took into account potential logging-related changes in the soil cover condition, alteration of the paludification rate due to removal of the tree cover or the probability of this process being accelerated or reversed; potential detrimental effects of logging on microclimate (wind and temperature conditions); 5) distinctive features compared to the rest of Karelia; 6) presence of operating protected areas. In addition, the specific features of plant communities on islands in the western part of the White Sea are described.