TYPOLOGICAL STRUCTURE OF THE SIVERSKY DONETS RIVER CATCHMENT FORESTS

Abstract

Introduction

The Siversky Donets River is the largest tributary of the Don River. The absolute heights vary from 250 m in the upper part of the catchment area to 30 m in its lower reaches. The fall of water surface is 190 m; the average slope is 0.18 m/km. The width of the valley varies from 8 km to 60 km. Many leading scientists such as D. I. Litvinov, V. I. Taliyev, G. M. Vysotsky, P. P. Kozhevnikov, D. V. Vorobyov, M. I. Alekseenko, M. I. Kotov, O. S. Migunova, V. P. Tkach and others have researched the forests near the Siversky Donets River.

In modern conditions, forest management on a catchment basis is deeply realized by developed countries as a clear circumscribing of the catchment by natural boundaries allows quantifying it in many ways - geomorphological, hydrological, soil, phytocenotic. Moving to the organization of the forest management on the water catchment principle is the task for the future. But now it is necessary to lay the foundations of the catchment and landscape forestry. This problem is intersectorial and can only be solved at the state level. It is also necessary to develop legislation regulating the economical activity under the change of forms of land ownership and going to the versatile production.

The aim of the work is to conduct the typological assessment of the Siversky Donets catchments structure in order to identify the forest types variety on the catchments, that should be taken into account in forest management.

Material and methods

For the typological characterization of the Siversky Donets River catchment, forest areas which are belonging within the catchment were selected from the database of the Production Association “Ukrderzhlisproekt”. Water catchments boundaries are defined by means of the MapInfo Professional 12.5 and vector map of Ukraine.  Methodological provisions of Ukrainian forest typology school are used for forest typological analysis. Water catchments classification by the share of areas covered with forests is conducted by the method of M. D. Grodzinsky

Results

There were 23 catchments allocated on the Siversky Donets River catchment. According to the M. D. Grodzinsky classification, the catchments of the rivers Homilsha, Untitled (FC-2) are relatively forested (percentage of forest land is 50-75 %), the rivers Hotimlya, Suhy Burluk, Voloska Balakliyka, Velyky Burluk, Hnylytsya are almost treeless (percentage of forest land is less than 5 %), the rivers Udy, Mozh, Byshkiv, Scherbinka, Milova, Untitled (FC-11), Wovcha, Povna, Untitled (FC-14), Hnylytsya 1, Untitled (FC-20), Oskil  are little forest-covered (percentage of forest land is 5-25 %), the rivers Babka, Untitled (FC-1) Tetliha, Untitled (FC-2) are medium forested (percentage of forest land is 25-50 %). According to our calculations, the actual percentage of forest land of the Siversky Donets River catchments varies from 0.7 % to 63.6 %.

On the studied object there are 32 forest types, 3 of which are in pine forests, 6 are in fairly infertile pine site type, 11 are in fairly fertile site type, 12 are in fertile site type.

There are different forest types on the water catchments such as:  fresh maple-linden oak forest (on the rivers Babka, Tetliha, Untitled (FC-1),  Untitled (FC-2), Udy, Mozh, Homilshanka, Scherbinka, Milova, Untitled (FC-11), Wovcha), fresh oak-pine forest (on the rivers Povna, Untitled (FC-14), Hnylytsya 1, Hotimlya, Untitled (FC-21), Voloska Balakliyka), dry maple-linden oak forest (on the rivers Byshkiv, Velyky Burluk, Oski), fresh linden-oak-pine forest (on the river Hnylytsya), fresh pine forest (on the rivers Suhy Burluk, Untitled (FC-20)).

 The allocation of forest stands by water catchments is following: oak forest stands dominate on the catchments of the rivers Babka, Tetliha, Udy, Homilsha, Untitled (FC-1), Byshkiv, Scherbinka, Milova, Untitled (FC-2), Mozh, Untitled (FC-14), Hnylytsya, Velyky Burluk; pine forest stands dominate on the catchments of the rivers Povna, Untitled (FC-14) , Hnylytsya 1, Hotimlya, Suhy Burluk, Untitled (FC-20), Voloska Balakliyka, Untitled (FC-21). On the catchments of the rivers Wovcha and Oskil, the ratio of the oak and pine forest stands is almost the same, but oak forest stands dominate.

Conclusions

Typological diversity of the Siversky Donets River catchments is represented by the 32 forest types. The actual percentage of forest land ranges from 0.7 % to 63.6 %. The largest area of the Siversky Donets River catchment belongs to the following types: fresh maple-linden oak forest (54.4 %), dry maple-linden oak forest (13.9 %), fresh oak-pine forest (16.1 %), fresh pine forest (3.6 %), fresh linden-oak-pine forest (3.1%), moisture floodplain birch-field maple oak  forest (1.7 %), dry oak-pine forest (1,5 %) and dry pine forest (1 %). Other forest types form less than 5 % of the total forest covered area. Oak and pine forest stands dominate (89.9 %) because of geomorphological and soil conditions. It’s necessary to take into account such diversity of forest types while planning forestry arrangements.