Buffer boreal forests as an evolutionary phenomenon in the Pacific ecotone of Northern Eurasia

Abstract

The results of landscape-ecological surveys in the Komsomolsk Nature Reserve (the Lower Amur region) have been used as a basis for empirical–statistical modeling of the spatial organization of floristic phratries and forest types that characterize the Amur sub-Pacific as part of the continental marginal part of the megaecotone. Trends in the evolutionary forest-forming processes are described. Mechanisms have been revealed for the origin of buffer forest communities, including spruce–broadleaf and nemoral fir–spruce forests of the Manchurian–Okhotian phratry. Forests of this phenomenal buffer flora are distinguished by extremely high parameters of structural and functional development and have reached the state approaching the evolutionary climax. The previously advanced concepts of the Pacific ecotone of Northern Eurasia as a focus of evolutionary processes in the continental biosphere have been confirmed.