From Mountains to Plains: Ecological Structure of the South Ural (Russia) Fen Vegetation

Abstract

This study focuses on comparing the driving ecological factors and community diversity of fen vegetation from the plain part of the South Ural region with those of the mountain fen vegetation, previously described by us (Ivchenko and Znamenskiy Russian Journal of Ecology 47:453–459, 2016), by means of vegetation data clustering and gradient analysis. The indicator values by several authors (H Ellenberg, E Landolt, LG Ramensky, DN Tsyganov) and WorldClim bioclimatic variables were used to determine the ecological meaning of the gradients. We found that the main gradient for both plain and mountain fen vegetation is the “poor-rich fen” gradient, which depends on local substrate chemical composition. The second gradient is associated with moisture, which tends to increase consistently both from mountains towards plains and across plains from peneplain towards West Siberian Lowland. The moisture gradient proved to be unrelated to precipitation, which increase linearly from plains towards mountains. The community diversity in the mountain part is higher than in the plain part. The fen vegetation of plains and mountains overlap in ordination space but a half of the types described for mountain fen vegetation do not occur on plains, while two types of plain fen vegetation from the West Siberian Lowland are absent on mountains.