Proceedings of the National Museum of Natural History, 2013, Nr 11, pages 87-92

Spatial Distribution of Steppe Ecosystems in the Eastern Ukraine.

Kolomytsev, G., Vasyliuk, O.

Summary:
Steppes are the most typical landscapes of Eastern Ukraine. However, they are the most anthropogenic transformed habitats. Nowadays remnants of the steppes require identification, inventory and protection. We aim to identify potential steppe habitats in three oblasts of Eastern Ukraine, perform their spatial analysis using GIS, localities records and remote sensing data. In total 218,981 ha of steppe habitats were identified within the study area, that is ~2.6 % of the total area of Donetsk, Luhansk and Kharkiv oblasts. Today only 17.5 % of the sand arenas have left within the area, all other areas of sand arenas were destroyed due to afforestation. The identified steppe habitats occupy a small portion of the entire study area. These sites should be considered as a prior territory for expansion of natural reserve fund and its coverage should be increased to European standards.

Keywords:
steppe ecosystems, spatial distribution, Eastern Ukraine.

Address:
I. Schmalhausen Institute of Zoology of NAS of Ukraine; Bohdan Khmelnytsky St. 15, Kyiv, 01030, Ukraine; e-mail: g.kolomytsev@gmail.com, vasyliuk@gmail.com

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