Home – Home – Jornals – Geography and natural resources 2018 number 1

We examine the current state of the geosystems on Popov Island. It is found that as a result of the anthropogenic influence there are taking place the transformation of primary forests and an increase in the proportion of adventives vegetation near settlements; depletion of the species composition of lichen cover has been recorded. The soils of the islands are characterized by a small thickness and are highly skeletal of the stony-rubble composition; therefore, most of the island’s territory refers to the erosion-hazardous group of lands. Active sheet erosion is observed on roads and roadsides composed of granites and granitoids, occasional basalts and diorite-basalts dominated by polydominant broad-leaved forests on dark burozems. The anthropogeni cally transformed territories count for 12.57 % of the area. In spite of a relatively strong anthropogenic impact, the geosystems have retained their natural state. The indicator of landscape diversity, and also species diversity of vascular plants and lichens, and the coefficient of natural protection of the territory reflect the persistence of the functioning mechanisms of the system within the island, and ensure its geosystem integrity and the presence of stable internal linkages between natural-territorial com plexes. A reconstruction of the natural environment from data of pollen and radiocarbon analysis revealed natural spatiotempo ral changes of landscapes for the last six thousand years. The structural transformations of geosystems were caused by changes in the climatic regime and occurred in several stages. The latter half of the Atlantic period was characterized by a prevalence of polydominant broad-leaved forests; small-leaved forests dominated during the warming period of the Little Ice Age; the propor tion of broad-leaved species increased during the Little Holocene Optimum and under current global warming.