Biodiversity of Birch Forests in Mariy Chodra National Park

Abstract

In recent decades, the interest of scientists and the entire world community in the problems of studying and preserving biological diversity has increased. Fundamental knowledge about the flora and fauna of specific areas, especially protected natural areas, should become the basis for the rational use of biological diversity as a potential for their socio-economic development. The aim of this research is to characterize the typological, taxonomic and structural diversity of birch forests in Mariy Chodra National Park, the Republic of Mari El. In this paper, the authors carried out a comprehensive study of the birch forests of Mariy Chodra National Park, where such study has not been carried out before. The classification of birch forests is fraught with significant difficulties, since their overwhelming majority occurred by changing the most diverse associations of spruce, pine, and partly oak plantations. Moreover, the birch forests themselves represent only a certain stage of forest development. In natural environment, birch forests play a vital part in the restoration of pine and spruce plantations. One can combine the associations of birch plantations into the following groups: green moss birch forests, long moss birch forests, sphagnum birch forests, herbaceous birch forests, grassy marsh birch forests, complex birch forests. Of these associations, the most common are birch forests: with spruce undergrowth, linden and spruce-linden. Other associations occupy small areas and are found mainly in the zone of significant development of oak forest elements. In this paper, the authors analyzed for the first time the biodiversity of birch forests of Mariy Chodra National Park in The Mari El Republic. The authors identified 14 types of birch forests in rather contrasting habitat conditions. The assessment of ecological conditions also showed that the studied communities are in rather contrasting habitat conditions, which made it possible to more fully assess the diversity of the analyzed territory.