Erland G. Kolomyts Pacific Ocean Mega Ecotone of Northern Eurasia: An Evolutionary Model of a Continental Biosphere

Annotation

The monograph presents the results of studies of the organization of terrestrial geo (eco-) systems in the Pacific mobile belt - the tectonically and climatically active zone of contact between the mainland and the ocean, creating new land areas. A detailed evolutionary landscape-ecological concept based on a discrete empirical-statistical modeling of forest natural complexes at various stages of the geological history of the formation of the continental biosphere in the Northwest Pacific is presented. Based on the materials of large-scale landscape surveys conducted at experimental ranges, three spatiotemporal sections are described with a common trajectory of subaerial landscape genesis: 1) neo-specific, progressive - the stage of nucleation and upward evolution of volcanogenic island-arc geosystems of the Neogene-Quaternary age in the ocean environment, with the formation at the local level of the beginnings of zonal types of geographical environment and with the emergence of "climate unjustified" highly productive forests due to geothermal th power of active volcanoes; 2) subpacific marginal continental - the stage of their subsequent continental development as a young (Mesozoic) mountain-valley morphostructure, with the formation of buffer forest communities of evolutionary menopause; 3) subpacific regressive - the final stage of decaying evolution, due to the fragmentation and sinking of the marginal parts of the material, with the advent of continental islands with a "decrepit" denudation relief, active exogenous morpholithogenesis and a simplified structure of the forest cover. The climatic-genetic mechanisms of evolutionary landscape-ecological processes in various sectors of the Pacific megaecoton are described using simulation of these processes according to landscape forecasts for the next 100-200 years. According to the stability parameters of forest communities, chronological regularities of climatogenic phytocenotic transformations in the island-arc and marginal continental landscapes are revealed.