Assessment of taxonomic diversity of soil biota for landscape planning

Abstract

Biological (taxonomic) diversity is the potential for self-organization of the biosphere, ensuring its regeneration, resistance to the effects of various environmental factors, including anthropogenic, as well as a resource for compensating the losses of individual biotic elements. Disturbance of ecological balance is a prerequisite for the emergence of conflict situations of local and regional nature, leading to irretrievable losses of certain types of natural resources, as well as aesthetic value and recreational significance of landscapes. Various indicators can express the degree of change in the biodiversity of transformed geosystems as well as the state of biotic communities as a whole: indices of diversity, dominance and occurrence of species, as well as through evaluation scales, where the deviation of the indicator from the background characteristics is shown in percentages or points. This assessment has identified three main categories of situations in the spectrum of biotic communities: critical, conflict and relatively prosperous. The main trend of changes in the taxonomic diversity of soil invertebrate communities is a decrease in the number of species in the gradient of increasing climate aridity, strengthening of the hypothermia and anthropogenic pressure. The revealed regularities of soil biota’ changes can be used to optimize environmental control.