Ledovskiy N.V., Khodyachikh I.N.
ECOLOGICAL AND PHYTOCENOLOGICAL CHARACTERISTIC OF SOUTHERN URALS UNEVEN DEPOSITS OF STEPPE ZONE ^{[№ 10 ' 2015]}
One of the most urgent problems in the Orenburg region as well as in other steppe regions of the country is the restoration and conservation of steppe communities and component species on disturbed lands. Over the last two decades in Russia about 26 million hectares of arable land are withdrawn from agricultural use and moved into the category of uneven deposits. But, currently, due to the increasing need to ensure economic and food security of the country, these lands are newly mastered. For the active monitoring of the succession processes in vegetation and soil deposits in order to use the land effectively in agriculture and for the protection of environment there is a great necessity in comprehensive information on all plant communities of the studied areas. In this regard, there arose a necessity of special study of the peculiarities of overgrowing of abandoned arable land, the assessment of plant species composition, stages of overgrowing and their duration, the possibility of restoring the fertility of the soil in the overgrown deposits and prospects for their use in the steppe zone of Southern Urals. The knowledge of the structure and dynamics of vegetation of different types of deposits is of great practical interest and allows you to make the environmentally correct decision about using them again, either to transfer into the group of arable lands or to keep as a reserve for the restoration of the steppe biome of Russia. Three groups of uneven deposits: the little-aged (from one to five years), middle-aged (ten to twelve), old-aged (fifteen years and older) were objects of study as well as intermediate stages of fallow land characterized by fragile species composition and coenotic groups. The results of the studies of fallow lands in the steppe zone of the southern Urals revealed the main ecological groups of plants in relation to moisture, they also gave an opportunity to make a phytocoenotic evaluation of uneven-aged deposits.