Ecoinformatics and Soil-Plant Formations - New Ecoinformatics Tools in Environmental Science: Applications and Decision-making - page 674

observed propagation of grazing,

anthropogenic transformations, and climate change have been widely discussed in
scienti

this boundary and forest res, reindeers '

c bibliography (Ji and Stocker 2003; Kondratyev and Grigoryev 2004).
Various hypotheses have been expressed about correlations between the natural
technogenic processes in the zone of this boundary. For instance, there is the
opinion that forest uence the northward propagation of the birch forests.

This can lead to considerable changes in the natives

fires can in fl

'
propagation. In the late 20th century some disagreements were observed between
forestry and deer-breeding. Thus, in Finland the areas of the reindeers

' habitation and the reindeers

' propagation

moves 400 500 km south from the boundary of the forests, that is, up to the boreal

zone. In other words, a change of the forest boundary is followed by a change of the
soil layer, and this, due to shifts in biogeocenotic cycles, can direct the succession
of the northern boundary of forests in an unpredicted direction. Moreover, this
prediction, based on the pre-history of the development of this boundary in natural
conditions, cannot be reliable. Therefore the use of the methods of eco-informatics
with its models and technologies of monitoring is now a single adequate method for
predicted estimates of the dynamics of the northern forests boundary. As far as this
is concerned, a lot of ecological problems appear, and thus the following is
necessary:

-

combining various elements of the forest ecosystems in the zone of the northern
boundary of the forests (reasons for the presence or absence of some type of
trees);

￿

the role of various diseases of the northern forests and their sensitivity to climate
changes and other external factors;

￿

the role of fires and their location and power in the change of the structure and

￿

con guration of the transfer boundary between forests and tundra;

the role of insects with an account of the dependence of their propagation and
the biomass on climate change in the dynamics of the northern forests boundary;

￿

patterns of scattering the seeds of various plants in the zone of the forests
northern boundary and their effect on its dynamics; and

￿

the impact of the dynamics of the forests northern boundary on the wild ani-
mals

￿

' migration and their habitat.

An expected climate warming can result in the substitution of some vegetation
ecosystems for others (exogenic succession). It will be especially manifested in
high latitudes where taiga transforms into tundra. Bogatyrev (1988) proposed a
model, which parameterizes the transformation processes in the tundra-taiga system
and makes it possible to reveal some important regularities. The phase variables are
the biomass of moss (X 1 ), vegetation of the grass-bush level (X 2 ), conifers (X 3 ),
forest cover (X 4 ), and dead organic matter of soil (X 5 ). The phase variables are
measured in tons of carbon per unit area (t/ha), and their spatial distribution is
assumed to be uniform. The carbon

fl flux scheme is given in Fig. 8.13 .