Influence of railway tracks on the distribution of adventive flora in the Cherkask region.

Abstract

Increasing anthropogenic influence on natural phytocenoses leads to impoverishment of the species composition of regional flora. Transformed territories became the basis for their appearance, from where they penetrate into semi-natural and natural phytocenoses, creating a threat to the existence of certain species, or even the functioning of certain ecosystems. The processes of adventitization create a real threat to the phytodiversity of the territory of Ukraine. According to the level of adventitization of the flora, Ukraine occupies a rather high place among other floras of the world, and now the spontaneous fraction of the adventitious flora of Ukraine includes more than 830 species of vascular plants. The list of species of adventitious plants of the spontaneous flora of the Cherkasy region was compiled on the basis of data collected during floristic surveys by route-expedition method, which were carried out during May-September 2020-2022. The research covered different ecotopes in terms of the degree of transformation and the direction of economic use of the site. Special floristic studies covered areas along transport, primarily railway routes, landfills, garbage dumps, and wastelands. The carried out fractional analysis of the flora of the territory around the railways of the Cherkasy region showed that the most numerous is the adventitious fraction (54.4%), apophytes make up 32.6%, species of natural flora – 13.0%. The adventitious fraction of the studied flora is represented by 132 species belonging to 101 genera and 30 families. According to the time of entry, 53.2% of species belong to the group of chenophytes, the rest belong to archaeophytes (46.8%). According to the method of introduction, the adventitious fraction of the studied flora includes acolytophytes (55.7%), spontaneously introduced plant species that gradually populated anthropogenically transformed ecotopes. Analysis of the life forms of the adventitious fraction of the studied flora showed the dominance of annuals (64.8%). A much smaller number of perennial species (31.2%), which is related to the extreme conditions of their existence, and only 4,0% of species belong to trees and shrubs.