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The article provides data on the distribution of the invasive boxelder maple in the Altai Krai. The article specifically considers its coenotic role in pine forests by the example of the Barnaul ribbon pine forest. A GIS project was developed to assess the distribution of boxelder maple in Altai krai. Mapping was based on the species location data obtained from the herbarium material (more than 500 sheets of the herbarium) deposited to the Altai State University (ALTB), the N.I. Vavilov All-Russian Plant Research Institute (WIR) and the V.L. Komarov Botanical Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences (LE). To map the boxelder maple distribution, an analysis of the forest stand maps of the Barnaul ribbon pine forest was also carried out (2010, 2018). For each maple location, the stratum, the stratum area, and the stand formula are taken into account. Over the ten-year observation period, the area of maple and mixed forests with the participation of Acer negundo has increased almost 6 times here. Monodominant maple forests and mixed forests with the participation of boxelder maple as well as with other invasive species are formed. This leads to a considerable anthropogenic transformation of pine forests and a decrease in their environment-forming, social-economic and ecological significance. The study reveals that generative plants were not found in every coenopopulation. If the plants reached the reproductive stage, then, on the whole, males prevailed fivefold in the coenopopulation. Most of the studied coenopopulations consisted of pre-generative individuals, with the exception of occasional young generative ones. Most of the trees in the studied populations reached the age of 10–15 years. For forest communities of the Barnaul forestry, two age periods of the ontogenetic state have been established – pre-generative and generative, which indicates a relatively early age of the phytoinvasion and its active stage.

We investigated 120 assemblages of phytoliths from modern top soils of 40 different plant communities of Northern and Western Altay region of Russia. The samples were collected from elevations between 360 m and 2360 m above sea level. Using statistical analyses, it was discovered that many communities produce sufficiently distinct assemblages based on standard morphotypes. Specifically we studied 6 kinds of forests (larch, spruce, fir, pine, cedar pine and birch-dominated), 3 kinds of steppes (true, meadow and petrophytic), 5 kinds of meadows (steppe-like, upland dry, wet floodplain, subalpine, alpine), alpine tundra, and mountain shrubland communities. The communities were not evenly sampled, with more redundancy in some types than in others. Using PCA, it was possible to reveal the few morphotypes most responsible for distinguishing different communities, e.g., low conical rondels, rondel sum, long cell sum, lanceolate cells with massive base, and bulliform cell sum.

Phytoliths are a useful paleoproxy in arid environments. This modern analog study assessed variability of silica phytoliths in 30 species of grasses and 42 modern soil samples from eight locations in the Altaysky Kray and the Republic of Gorny Altay of Russia. Phytoliths were grouped into 25 broadly defined morphotypes based on their 3D shapes under light microscope and presumed anatomical origin within the plant. Grasses exhibited the most diverse forms. Forests, meadows, and steppes can be distinguished based on differences in proportion of various morphotypes. Steppes can be reliably identified based on high proportion of rondel phytoliths, but low presence of lobate and lanceolate forms. Meadows have high proportion of lobate and lanceolate forms. All forests have high proportion of smooth long cells and lanceolate phytoliths. Coniferous forests additionally have small presence of blocky forms with pitted surface and pores from conifers. Phytolith assemblages were also found to vary with gradients of temperature and precipitation, which could enable direct paleoenvironmental inferences from phytoliths in geological sediments from the region. However, vegetation types could not be differentiated based on the presence of particular types of trichomes, as has been suggested for other regions in Russia.

The article discusses the importance of the factors of the formation of the landscape structure and landscape diversity for the creation of a natural park for the purpose of nature protection and the development of recreational nature management. The results of landscape studies performed in the process of substantiating the creation of a national park of regional significance "Foothills of Altai" in the vicinity of the resort of Belokurikha (Altai Krai) are presented. Functional zoning of the territory of the projected natural park with the allocation of zones of special protection, regulated recreational use and traditional nature management, as well as the buffer (buffer) zone is proposed.

The secondary succession of grass vegetation on the right bank of the river Ob (Altai territory) was investigated. The analysis has shown that the successions go in 3 hypothetical rows, depending on the humidity of ecotopes: ‘xerophytic’, ‘mesophytic’, ‘mesohydrophytic’. It is obvious that the rate of succession slows down in the conditions of more arid ecotopes. The dynamics of the aboveground phytomass are generally subject to this trend. The higher the succession rate, the quicker the phytomass develops.

The planned national nature park is situated in the northern part of the Altai foothills within the Belokurihinskiy granite massif. The flora includes 11 species of vascular plants listed in the Red Books of the Russian Federation (2008) and the Altai Territory (2006). Two species are endemics of Altai-Sayan mountainous country: Silene turgida and Dentaria sibirica. More than half of the territory (52.8%) is covered with forests. The fir taiga with the abundance of relict forms is the most extensive in terms of the area. Thus, the territory of the nature park features the following vegetation types: forests (small-leaved forests and conifer forests), meadows (steppe meadows, real (present), lowland meadows), meadow steppes, brakes, rocky vegetation, water vegetation and anthropogenic vegetation.

The Eurasian steppes represent the continent’s share of the world’s temperate grasslands and once have formed one of the largest continuous terrestrial biomes at an extent of ca. 10 Mio km2. The present chapter describes key aspects of steppes and puts the study region Kulunda in context giving overview data and maps on climate, flora and vegetation. Relatively dry conditions render tree growth limited throughout the biome, while grasses typically have high abundance. Major vegetation classes include meadow steppes often intersected with forest outposts (and then called forest steppe landscapes), typical steppes and dry steppes, all of which are present in the study region. Kulunda thus is a typical example of western Eurasian steppes, which receive a relatively large share of precipitation in winter. Spring conditions are not as dry as in neighbouring regions of Mongolia and China, resulting in a rich and partly specialised flora. Grasslands in the Kulunda region belong to the phytosociological class Festuco-Brometea, also highlighting similarities to western Eurasia rather than to the Mongolian plateau eastwards. The western Eurasian steppes have been subject to large-scale conversion to arable lands, and Kulunda is no exception. Less than 17% (ca. 28,000 km2) of the potential grassland cover still is extant. These sites contain a high number of locally threatened plant species and still reflect most of the former diversity of vegetation types found in this key Middle Asian steppe region.

Background and Aims: Reconstruction of past ecosystems requires a robust understanding of modern deposition patterns and taphonomy for the proxies utilized. Recent advances in phytolith analysis have contributed to improved understanding of these processes, but many gaps remain. This study aims to test a few specific hypotheses that have been proposed by research outside the tropics in the Northern Hemisphere. Our study area focuses on the Northern Altay, a culturally important region, entirely within Russia, north of China, and Mongolia. We collected 60 phytolith assemblages from modern soils at 300 to 2,300 m a.s.l. elevations, sampled from 20 plots in triple replicates within 13 different plant communities. Detailed releves of these plant communities, including forests, meadows, steppe, and alpine tundra, were obtained during the summer of 2017. We used a locally derived scheme of V. P. Sedelnikov to assign studied communities to ecological categories based on moisture and temperature availability.Methods: Standard oxidation and heavy liquid flotation methods of extraction were used. Morphotypes were counted under 400–1,000x magnification on an optical microscope. We used a two-tier approach to phytolith morphotypes classification: a detailed one with over 40 morphotypes included and a shorter one with only sums of selected morphotypes. The former approach can produce some interesting results, such as using various types of rondels (e.g., pyramidal vs. keeled) or large vs. small lanceolate (trichomes). Using sums may be more widely applicable, because the researchers can replicate these results better and less training is needed. However, there are fewer diagnostic options with the sums approach.Key Results: Our results, using discriminant analysis, canonical correspondence analysis and other multivariate statistical methods, confirm earlier studies, both in the region and elsewhere that despite redundancy in phytolith distributions in soils, there are some selected morphotypes that can reliably distinguish communities at various positions along elevational, moisture, and temperature gradients. We developed a regionally diagnostic key that allows researchers to quickly identify various plant communities based on their phytolith assemblages in soils.Conclusions: Seven of 13 regionally important communities at medium elevations in the Altay Mountains can be distinguished by using aggregated and more detailed phytolith morphotypes.

The paper presents floristic and geo-botanical characteristics of rare forest ecosystems of the south of Western Siberia – spruce forests on the site of the Ob river ancient bed within the modern Bolshaya Sogra within the boundaries of the state natural reserve ‘Kislukhinsky’ (Altai region). Spruce forests here are at the edge of their spread in the West Siberian Plain conditions. There are over 300 species of vascular plants found in these spruce forests. Among them are plants that are typical of the mountain taiga associations of Russian Altai, as well as orchids, which have high species diversity. Spruce forest set of associations is also varied. The uniqueness of the described communities to the south of Western Siberia, the large number of rare and endangered plant species listed in the Red Books of different ranks, as well as the boreal forest species complex rare to the lowland wooded steppe, which has a relict character, all served as the basis for allocating a special protection area in the ‘Kisl...

В статье приведены сведения о флористических находках в равнинной части Алтайского края (на Кулундинской равнине и Приобском плато). Впервые указаны для Алтайского края два вида – Tanacetum achilleifolium (Bieb.) Sch. Bip. и Dasystephana cruciata (L.) Zuev. Для 14 редких видов приведены новые сведения о распространении на территории края., Information on floristic findings in the plain part of Altai region (Altai province) is given. Two species (Tanacetum achilleifolium (Bieb.) Sch. Bip. and Dasystephana cruciata (L.) Zuev) are recorded from Altai region for the first time. The data on distribution of another 14 rare species are updated.

This paper contains previously unknown information about the appearance and expansion of a number of adventive species of plants new for the Altai Territory. They were discovered in 2008–2012 during the fieldwork tasks of the herbarium Altai State University, Barnaul. One of the species is invasive (quarantine plant for the Russian Federation) – Acroptilon repens (L.) DC. The range was about 10 ha. One of the species was listed as adventive for the first time – Briza maxima L. The species is sometimes cultivated as an ornamental plant. New locations were identified for three species previously found only in one area of the Altai Territory: (1) Scleranthus annuus L. – an agrophyte, a weed that spreads with cultivated crops; (2) Onopordon acanthium L. – a species that spreads in flood plains, along the highways, railways and pastures; and (3) Xanthium albinum (Widd.) H. Schulz – a plant, often seen along roadsides, wastelands and sandy riverbanks; only one reliable location within the Altai Territory was kn...

A review of the history of the study of forest communities GPKZ regional significance "Kisluhinsky" dedicated largely to the Big Warm. A complete geobotanical characteristic of unique natural complexes: 1) spruce forests that are at the limit of its distribution in terms of the West Siberian Plain; 2) Community reference shrub-grass and herbal pine forests. 3) the reference and the unique community of the floodplain (sogra).Key words: spruce forests, pine forests, warm, Kisluhinsky Reserve, south of Western Siberia, the Ob river.