Home – Home – Jornals – Flora and Vegetation of Asian Russia 2023 number 4

The Kuznetsk basin is one of the richest by the coal budget in the world, and hydraulic mining is in use there. The resulting large areas of disturbed lands have a negative influence on the local people health. Rather actual in this connection are activities to neutralise the environment pollution, to reclaim the disturbed lands, and also to reveal and introduce new and promising plant species. In this work we study the agrophytocoenosis created in 1989 by the authors on the hydraulic spoil bank of “Mokhovsky” open-cut coal mine (Kemerovo region). Based on long-term observations (years 1990-1993 and 1998) we establish that the artificial plant community on the hydraulic spoil bank is highly sustainable and its development is not similar to that on the zonal soils. The legume-grass base of our agrophytocoenosis is remaining to prevail during all the observation period, whereas legumes fall away within 2-3 years on the zonal soils. The productivity of our plant community is close to or higher than that of zonal plant communities. Maximal productivity of air-dry phytomass (63 cwt/ha) is observed on the second year of our agrophytocoenosis. The main contribution to the above-ground phytomass is due to legumes and grasses. The vertical structure of our plant community features a remarkable height of the herbage; and the main part (85 %) of the above-ground phytomass is contained in the layer 0-35 cm. It is so called near-surface vertical distribution (according to G.G. Pavlova, 1980), it is typical for the plant communities with legumes and small grasses as dominating species. As to the horizontal structure, the significant part of our agrophytocoenosis during the initial years (1990-1993) are species with a contagious distribution by the surface; and the horizontal species distribution on the tenth year (1998) is random. The species variety is usually not big. The significance graphs indicate rather developed structure of the agrophytocoenosis. On the tenth year of observation, species significance demonstrates a log-normal distribution, which is characteristic for multi-species zonal plant communities with predominance of species with an average abundance. The highest vitality amongst the seeded species was demonstrated by Agrostis gigantea, Trifolium pratense и Medicago sativa. Seeding legume-grass mixtures impedes the overgrowth of spoil banks by willows, which keeps the opportunity to use spoil banks as hayfields in the future.