Abstract
The quantitative assessment of ecosystem diversity is a basic tool for the evaluation of its resilience to anthropogenic loads and climatic changes. Our work is devoted to the large-scale predictive ecosystem mapping of hard-to-reach West Altai Mountain areas as well as vegetation, soil, and ecosystem quantitative diversity assessment (basing on Shannon and Simpson indices). The key site (7x4.5 km area) located in the Tigirek State Natural Reserve in the humid climate of the windward part of Altai. The predominance of shrub meadow communities and forb meadows on Gleyic Chernozems and Gleyic Chernic Phaeozems, Gleyic Cambisols, as well as the development of larch forests on the slopes of shady exposures on Greyzemic Chernozems are the regional specificities of the forest-steppe Altai ecosystem. Steppe communities (located on the Haplic Chernozems, Cambisols, and Leptosols), occupy less than 2% of the key site. The studied mountain forest-steppe ecosystem of West Altai is characterized by an extremely high level of spatial diversity: the Shannon index is 3.28, the Simpson is 0.95; an increase in soil diversity leads to a linear increase in vegetation diversity.
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