Herbage cover heterogeneity as indicator of ecology-phytocoenotical and biotopical diversity in oak forests

Abstract

The article is devoted to the identification of biotope diversity. There were surveyed the oak forests grown on the steep ravine slope near the Severskiy Donets River (the Don basin) within the area of National Park "Homolshansky lisy" (Kharkiv region, Ukraine). Study of spatial heterogeneity of herbage cover structure allowed distinguishing statistically significantly the seven types of multi-species mosaics on the coenotical level, which are characterized by specific ecology-phytocoenotical specificity. Such types form coenotical, hygrogen-edaphogenic and climatogenic series of substitution reflected the habitat diversity of surveyed area (as markers of habitat) and were in accord with the typology units of forests in Ukraine. In this paper there were used methods of phytoindication, indirect ordination, and non-parametric correlation analysis.