Succession processes on the territories disrupted due to illegal amber mining of Zhytomyr Regional Forestry and Hunting Administration

Abstract

The production of amber, irrespective of the method, is accompanied by destruction of surface geological deposits, soils, felling of forest stands, and destruction of vegetation. As a result of the extraction of soils from pits, craters and trenches, spilling and weaving of elevations, a more contrasting relief is formed. On the whole territory of Zhytomyr Regional Forestry and Hunting Administration where extraction was carried out new man-made forms of relief were formed which doesn’t a characteristic of the natural landscape. A mineralized surface is characterized for all affected areas by local landscape formations of several dozen hectares with different configurations of borders with completely destroyed soils and a highly dismembered micro-relief consisting of alternating shafts and humps with craters, ditches, and pits. The results show that the characteristic consequence of amber mining by the hydromechanical method is also the acidification of the substrate with the highest acidity the pH value was 2.5. This situation is due to the fact that water for hydromechanical alluvium is taken from the marshes and has high acidity, as a result of soil washing with such water, there is a change in its pH to the side of the more acidic. In areas where the acidity of the substrate had above 3.5 the self-seeding was practically absent. The study of the species diversity of plants growing on the territory of amber extraction makes it possible to develop effective mechanisms for stimulating the existing natural regeneration and developing an appropriate assortment of plants for further dendro-reclamation. The vegetation analysis we conducted on 14 temporary trial plots. Obviously that the overwhelming majority of species discovered in the study remains of natural vegetation typical for those types of forest and forest plant conditions that exist on the sites prior until their damage. We noted that most tree plants are vegetative renewal after cutting or covering during the amber extraction. Small plants and even whole groups were preserved at the roots of the felled trees. We observed the most abundant natural renewal of forestry species in areas where amber extraction was carried out manually. Precisely on these plots we found the most diverse variety of self-seeding wood species and vice versa, in areas where mining was carried out by the hydromechanical method, the quantity and quality of self-seeding is much smaller, in the acidified areas is absent at all. We convinced that the increased acidity of the substrate is an important problem that needs to be addressed in the context of further work.

Keywords: amber, dendro-reclamation, extraction, disturbance, reclamation, damage, self-seeding, succession, natural regeneration.