Andrei Ju. Korolyuk, Roman F.Bukarev

Using ArcInfo to Evaluate Plant Biodiversity in Southern Siberia

The Baraba Steppe is a southern Siberian region with native physical and geographical conditions with close coexistance of grassland, forest, steppe and wetland plant communities. Using PC ARC/INFO, we developed a GIS to provide the capability to operate with large databases on Southern Siberia ecosystems' biodiversity. The main objectives of the GIS are to answer users' inquiries of two types: 1. Evaluating a species or a regime of species' spatial distribution within a given site (species of plants and animals, associated communities etc.), and 2. Obtaining data on the biodiversity of a given site (the species list, the list of communities with their areas, the Red Book species list, analytical maps etc.) in order to evaluate the biodiversity of large regions in order to configure and designate a protected areas network. Using topo maps (1:25,000) and aerial photographs (1:14,000), the hypsometric, road, vegetation, and hydrological layers were developed. These coverages were then modified with field research surveys to include items such as plant communities and abundance. The region analyzed was subdivided and an algorythm was developed to evaluate the biodiversity indices for each site. The identified sites of greatest vegetation biodiversity can be used in designation of protected areas and be considered for human activity within Baraba.

Background

The main goal of this investigation was to develop guidelines for assembling GIS dataset of Vegetation of Southern Siberian. There were the following objectives: 1) to construct the GIS's structure - recognizing basic elements and relationships between them, 2) to develop algorithms of processing users' queries, and 3) to work out the cartographic analysis methods through the use of a sample area from the real world. A part of the Baraba Steppe--also known as Baraba Depression, or simply Baraba--was selected as the area for which to develop this model.

Baraba is a part of of the West Siberian Depression, geographically located on the west of Novosibirskaya oblast. All its territory can be divided into three zones, 1) the wetland zone, 2) the forest zone or 3) the forested steppe zone.

The third zone is the focus of this paper, thus it merits more detailed description: The forested steppe zone (some scientists refer to this as the forested grassland zone) occupies the southern part of Baraba. Its distinguishing geographic feature is mane relief. Manes are gently sloping and low mounds occupying about 10% of all the area and distributed irregularly. They may be as long as several dozen kilometers, with a height up to 10 meters.

Another feature of the forested steppe zone is plate-like depressions of 10-50 cm in depth, encompassing boggy sites. Deeper hollows contain an estimated 1500 lakes. These lakes contain water varying from fresh to bitter salt, their banks are covered with reeds, forming splavinas, which are thick islands of reeds floating on the surface of lakes. Groundwater depth in Baraba is an average on 1 meter. Salinity and proximity of waters to the soil surface are the main geologic features of Baraba. Rivers are rare; they either drain into lakes in Baraba, or disappear into grass bogs saturated with water.

These conditions determine the strong relationships between flora and the drainage regime. The flora of Baraba is very poor, but the plant cover here is very diverse, and the plant cover diversity is particularly high in saline depressions between manes, because even tiny changes of the soil water depth result in great changes in plant growth conditions.

Map of Hydrology Map of Soil Salinity

Methods

We reason that the spatial data structure must reflect ÒnaturalÓ levels of the plant cover hierarchy. It seems to be divided into three levels, 1) the species level - diversity of flora, 2) the plant communities level - the cenotic level, and 3) the level of plant communities combinations - the landscape level.

For the first two levels we created the following databases: 1) the list of plant species, 2) the database on plants distribution, 3) the database on plant communities (geographic descriptions). Each object (a species or a community) was provided with geographic coordinates.

Map of Vegetation Electronic maps serve as the basis for the third level. The mid-scaled "Map of Vegetation" is the main cartographic document. Through the legend numbers it is related to the database on territorial vegetation units containing information about each item from the legend, such as content of plant communities in the given item and proportions of their areas. Numbers of plant communities are links to another database, Plant Communities, relating each community to the full list of plant species and abundance/occurence indices for each species. The database Plant Species contains the following information: the Latin name of a species, its ecological group and protection status. This structure of the GIS allows the construction of various text and tabular reports and analytic maps. The actual problems to be solved by the use of the GIS are selection of greatest biodiversity sites, design of protected areas networks, and ecological assessment of natural conditions changes due to human activity within certain areas.

Map of Sp[ecies Selected by Query

Conclusion

The Vegetation of Southern Siberia GIS provides a user with information on the following queries:
1. The assessment of a given object distribution or a group of objects within the defined area:
- composition of tabular reports on a given species or a group of species distribution within the defined area (classified respectively to administrative regions, landscape types, and plant community types);
- creation of point-featured maps on plant species distribution within the given area;
- creation of plant species distribution density maps provided with specific data: occurence (%), the average projective cover, the resource potential (total stock);
- composition of tabular reports on given plant communities distribution;
- creation of point-featured plant communities distribution maps;
- creation of plant communities distribution density maps provided with information about relative area of communities;
- creation of analytic maps: resource potentials (medicinal plants, plants used in industry, and other classes), biodiversity variety in different regions, endangered plant objects and so on.

2. Obtaining information on the given site biodiversity: the list of species, the list of communities provided with their relative and actual areas, the list of medicinal, rare, endangered, relict, endemic species, the list of rare or endangered plant communities provided with their descriptions. Creation of thematic and analytic maps of different scales on the area selected by a user.

Map of Simpson's Biodiversity Index One of main requirements of electronic maps is their scale (more correctly, their information capacity respective to a specific scale). The basic scales used are 1:1000000 and 1:200000. The first scaleÕs purpose is to provide visual, easily-readable pictures of large areas. The second scale is necessary for detailed analysis of the given territory and for handling specific and often very local problems (like biodiversity estimation of the selected area proposed for creation of a natural reserve, biodiversity loss assessment in a case of landuse type change within the given area and so on). This scale level also allows a viewer to properly relate maps of greater and smaller scales.

Roman F.Bukarev
Ecological Club, Novosibirk State University
20/2, Pirogov ul., Novosibirsk 630090 Russia
email: roman@ecoclub.nsu.ru
phone +7 (3832) 397 885

Andrei Korolyuk
Central Siberian Botanical Garden,
Russian Academy of Sciences Siberian Branch
Novosibersk 630090 Russia