Effects of Global Climate Changes on Boreal Forests of the Northwestern Pacific. A Landscape–Environmental Prognosis

Abstract

Abstract—The paper presents a quantitative analysis of the responses of forest ecosystems located in various sectors of the Pacific Ocean megaecotone in northern Eurasia to climate changes forecasted for the next 50–200 years with E GISS and HadCM3 global prediction models. The produced environmental scenarios were compared with similar predictions for intracontinental regions of eastern Europe. Two possible predictive climatic trends were examined: cold–arid and thermoarid. The Mendeleev insular arc ecoregion (Kunashir Island) features an exceptionally high rate of functional absorption of habitat areas of almost all basic plant communities by extrazonal objects; this escalates the climatogenic transformation of the biogeocoenologic structure of insular arc geo(eco)systems to the regional scale. In the marginally continental, low-mountain, lower part of the Amur River basin, buffer forest communities are actively developing amid similar, although less intense, phytocoenologic transformations.