Russian geobotany: results and prospects. On the work of the All-Russian scientific conference with international participation dedicated to the 100th anniversary of the Department of Geobotany of the Komarov Botanical Institute (St. Petersburg, September 26–30, 2022)

Abstract

The All-Russian Scientific Conference “Russian geobotany: results and development prospects” was dedicated to the 100th anniversary of the Department of Geobotany of the Komarov Botanical Institute. The Conference was held September 26–30, 2022 in St. Petersburg (Proceedings…, 2022). 123 geobotanists from 25 cities of Russia participated in the Conference as well as our colleagues from Belarus, Kazakhstan, and Vietnam. The conference activity was held in three main topics: “Vegetation diversity and conservation”, “Structure and dynamics of plant communities”, “Vegetation geography and cartography”. At the plenary session and section meetings 62 oral and 56 poster presentations were presented. Three “round-table” talk sessions were held: two of them were dedicated to the problems of vegetation classification and the last — to the issues of geobotanical terminology. A significant part of the reports at the section “Diversity and protection of plant communities” was devoted to the classification of vegetation. The most part of authors used methods of floristic classification (Brown-Blanquet approach), but general analytic surveys were presented only in some works, and the rest were devoted to regional and local prodromuses of individual unions or to descriptions of lower syntaxa. A significant part of geobotanists follows the traditional principles of the Russian and Soviet school of dominant-determinant classification; the two other approaches to vegetation classification were applied in single reports: topological-ecological and geographical-genetic. Several papers have been devoted to the classification of habitat types. A significant part of vegetation studies have been carried out on the territory of protected areas: nature reserves, sanctuaries, national parks and natural landmarks: from the westernmost — Belovezhskaya Pushcha (Belarus) to the easternmost — the Bastak Reserve (Jewish Autonomous Region) and the Koryak Reserve (Kamchatka Region). Many of the reports at the section “Structure and dynamics of plant communities” concerned the study of vegetation dynamics after anthropogenic impacts, which are the main destabilizing factors of vegetation cover. Very few studies related to climate change have been presented. Several reports analyzed the demographic structure of populations. Few reports were also devoted to the statistical modelling of vegetation dynamics. The modern approach based on the functional characteristics of plants is just beginning to develop in Russian geobotany. Rapidly developing machine learning methods are gradually being introduced into the arsenal of geobotanical science methods — for the purposes of vegetation classification and vegetation mapping. Research in the botanical geography and cartography continues in various regions of our country, in Belarus and Kazakhstan. The positive aspects in cartographic work are the increasing use of remote sensing data and tools for their processing, as well as the compilation of applied maps based on vegetation maps to solve various practical problems. However, a small number of reports were presented in the section “Vegetation geography and cartography”, which may reflect a decrease in interest in this area and a lack of specialists. In addition, it should be noted that very few works devoted to major botanical-geographic generalizations have been carried out in recent decades. Less and less geobotanists are engaged in middle- and small-scale vegetation mapping, which would continue and develop the traditions of the national school of geobotanical mapping and zoning.