PACIFIC OCEAN MEGA-ECOTONE OF NORTHERN EURASIA AS EVOLUTIONARY MODEL OF CONTINENTAL BIOSPHERE
ERLAND G. KOLOMYTS *
Laboratory of Landscape Ecology, Institute of Ecology of the Volga River Basin, Russian Academy of Sciences, Togliatti, 445003, Russia.
*Author to whom correspondence should be addressed.
Abstract
The problems of the study of geo (eco) system organization of insular and marginal-continental land in different morphotectonic and macroclimatic sectors of the Pacific ocean mega-ecotone of Northern Eurasia are set forth. The ecological and phytocoenotic effects of oro-climatic interactions along the mega-ecotone are described. The issues of the theory of evolutionary landscape study are considered as a novel trend of complex physical geography; its subject must be the processes and events of landscape formation in the tectonically and climatically active ocean-continent interface.
The empirical-statistical modeling of landscape connections, as well as the structure and function of floristic and phytocoenotic formations, which characterize the boreal ecotone of Priamurye sub-Pacific, has been carried out. The mechanisms of emergence of buffer forest communities belonging to two phratries (Manchurian-Okhotian and Manchurian-Angaridian) were revealed. It was shown that buffer spruce-broadleaf and nemoral fir-spruce forests of the Manchurian-Okhotian phratrie are an evolutionary phenomenon of the boreal sub-Pacific. The previously postulated propositions about the Pacific Ocean mega-ecotone of Northern Eurasia as a focus of evolutionary processes in the continental biosphere were confirmed.
Keywords: Ecotonic biogeosystems, mega-ecotone, insular and marginal-continental landscapes, evolutionary landscape science, boreal forests floristic and phytocoenotic formations, buffer forest communities