Home – Home – Jornals – Geography and natural resources 2018 number 3

For rehabilitation of disturbed ecosystems in mining areas, it is proposed to identify centers of biological diversity concentra tion in the immediate vicinity of coal-mining enterprises. Such centers should be selected on the basis of assessing natural land scape vulnerability to anthropogenic impact and calculating the rare species index. This research was done by using, as an ex ample, the Novokuznetsk district of Kemerovo oblast. In assessing vulnerability through a comparison (in matrix form) of calculated parameters of anthropogenic transformation and sustainability of landscapes, five levels of vulnerability (very high, high, medium, low, very low) were identified. The proportion of the territory of the district with low and very low vulnerability makes up 70.8 % and 7 %, respectively. The rare species index was calculated, based on assessing biodiversity represented by more than 1404 species, including 46.3 % of plant species and 36.3 % of animal species from the regional Red Data Book. GIS technologies were used at all stages of investigations. As a result, six centers of biodiversity concentration were identified for the Novokuznetsk district. The sites encompass key types of landscapes with very low and low vulnerability and a high index of rare species. Three of them are located in the Salair chain of hills, namely, at the interface of steppe, forest and valley landscapes (site I with rare species index of 9.1) as well as within taiga landscapes (6.4 for sites II and III). Three sites are located in the Kuznetsk Alatau; these are rare landscapes with tilia sibirica (IV - 23.1), and typical taiga landscapes of eastern (V - 23.1) and northern (VI - from 8.8 to 23.1) low mountains. The suggested approach can be used as a tool for solving environmental problems of mining regions.