Moss occurrences in Yugyd Va National Park, Subpolar and Northern Urals, European North-East Russia

Yugyd Va National Park is the largest National Park in Europe and contains an array of primary boreal (Northern) forests preserved in an almost undisturbed state. The park is located on the western slopes of the Subpolar and the Northern Urals, on the border between Europe and Asia. The Urals are a mountain range that runs almost continuously along the 60°E meridian from the Arctic Ocean coast to the Ural River and north-western Kazakhstan. The Urals are a large and important biogeographic boundary that separates the flora and fauna of the continents of Europe and Asia (Chibilev 2011).

Most landscapes within these areas are free from anthropogenic impacts, so plant communities and their dynamics exist there in their natural state. Natural succession in these forests is initiated by such disturbances as windfalls and fires. Recreational uses of the park include rafting, boating and hiking in the summer and Nordic skiing in the winter. Due to the remote location of the park, the amount of tourism there is still quite low.

The study of the flora and vegetation diversity of terrestrial ecosystems in the park was performed with an integrated approach at both community and species levels. The standard methods of plant systematics, geobotany and phytogeography were used. Important “Plant Areas” were studied by describing plant communities along altitudinal gradients from watercourses to their watersheds. The results of this study were documented in the Herbarium (SYKO) of the Institute of Biology of Komi Scientific Centre of the Ural Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences.

A dataset was prepared from data published in scientific literature and acquired from the moss collection of the Herbarium (SYKO). The earliest collections examined came from 1943 and the most recent from 2015. For each species, information is given on the catalogue number, including herbarium label data from the moss collection of the Herbarium (SYKO), associated references, basis of record, geographic locality, verbatim locality, geographic coordinates, collection date, collector and person who identified the specimen (“identified by”).

The Ministry of Education and Science of the Russian Federation. Project N 18-4-4-14 (АААА-А17-117112270073-0) of the Ural Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences Complex Programme "Diversity of the main components of ecosystems along the latitudinal and altitudinal gradients of the Northern and the Subpolar Urals’ western macroslopes" and Project N АААА-А19-119011790022-1 "The diversity of flora and vegetation of the Subpolar Urals’ Western macroslope".

This study was carried out in the foothills and mountain landscapes of the Subpolar Urals, in the basins of four first-order tributaries of the Pechora River: the Kozhim River (in the Rosomakha, Maldynyrd, Zapadnye Saledy, Yuasnyrd, Maldyiz and Obeiz mountain ranges), the Kosyu River (in the Vostochnye Saledy and Kolokolenny mountain ranges), the Bolshaya Synya River (on Sablinskiy ridge) and the upper stream of the Shchugor River. The major tributaries of the Kozhim River studied were the Balbanyu River, Limbekoyu River and Syvyu River. In the Kosyu River basin, the territories near its major tributary (the Vangyr River) and near the lakes Mezhgornye and Okunevye were studied. In the basin of the upper stream of the Bolshaya Synya River, the areas adjacent to its tributaries, including the Voyvozh-Synya River and the Lunvozh-Synya River, were studied.

Mosses of the Northern Urals were collected in the basin of the Shchugor River (in the Telpos and Sumk-Ner mountain ranges and on the mountains Telpos-iz, Yank-Kart-Tump, Vay-Khury-Tump and Khodymalya-Tump) and two of its tributaries: the Podcherem River (Pelener Mountain) and the Telpos River.

The authors contributing to the dataset used standard methods of mosses collection. The collecting localities were arbitrarily chosen in an attempt to include the largest number of different floristic associations and landscape forms in the samples. To achieve this purpose, a net of radial routes around each field base camp was planned. Short descriptions of plant communities were made in the localities of mosses collection. Moss samples were collected once and on each type of substrate.

In addition to the authors’ collections, the dataset includes information on moss occurrences obtained from literature (Dyachenko 1997, Dyachenko and Fomicheva 1986, Gorchakovskiy 1958, Kildyushevskiy 1956, Kuvaev 1970, Pole 1915, Tsinzerling 1935). More than 92% of the occurrence records were based on preserved samples from the Herbarium (SYKO) (Table 1). Some records (412) from locations adjacent to the border of the National Park were also included in the dataset.

The data were collected and identified by bryologists from the Institute of Biology of Komi Scientific Centre of the Ural Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences. Some moss specimens were identified by taxonomic specialists from the Komarov Botanical Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences, the Faculty of Biology of Lomonosov Moscow State University and the Tsitsin Main Botanical Garden of the Russian Academy of Sciences.

On each herbarium label, the following fields were filled out: “Scientific name”, “Locality” (with geographic coordinates), “Habitat”, “Substrate”, “Collector name”, “Determined by” (identification), “Collection date” and “Catalogue Number”. For the data obtained from literature, the descriptions given by the author(s) were converted into these herbarium label fields when possible. The dataset fields’ names were chosen according to Darwin Core (Wieczorek et al. 2012) and include the following: «occurrenceID», «institutionID», «collectionCode», «catalogNumber», «associatedReferences», «basisOfRecord», «kingdom», «phylum», «class», «family», «genus», «scientificName», «specificEpithet», «scientificNameAuthorship», «infraspecificEpithet», «taxonRank», «country», «countryCode», «recordedBy», «day», «month», «year», «locality», «identifiedBy», «decimalLatitude», «decimalLongitude», «coordinatePrecision», «coordinateUncertaintyInMeters», «georeferencedBy», «geodeticDatum».

References to the published literature, from which data were obtained for the checklist compilation, are presented in the “citations” section of the metadata. The herbarium label data were taken from the moss collection of the Herbarium (SYKO). All occurrence records were merged into one Microsoft Excel worksheet. The species names given were determined according to the Check-list of mosses of East Europe and North Asia (Ignatov et al. 2006). The unique values from the “Species” field were used as a preliminary Yugyd Va National Park mosses checklist. The preliminary checklist was verified on the “taxonomic name resolution service” (Boyle et al. 2013) with the help of the “taxize” package in the R environment (Chamberlain and Szocs 2013).

In most cases, georeferencing was performed using paper maps of different scales. The maps were in the Kavrayskiy projection and SK-42 reference system. Maps with a 1:500000 scale were used for obtaining coordinates with 1-minute precision (3,903 occurrences). Maps with a scale of 1:100000 were used for obtaining 1-second-precision coordinates (269 occurrences). The remaining 22 occurrences were left ungeoreferenced because of the ambiguity of the locality description. All coordinates were transformed in the WGS 84 reference system with QGIS software. The coordinate uncertainty in metres for each occurrence was calculated with the Georeferencing Calculator (Wieczorek and Wieczorek 2015).

The length of Yugyd Va National Park is 280 km from North to South and 120 km from West to East. It is located on the western macroslopes of the Subpolar and Northern Urals (Fig. 1).

Figure 1.  

The location of Yugyd Va National Park and moss sampling localities within the park. The collection locations of the preserved samples from the Herbarium (SYKO) examined are shown as red dots, while the localities of data obtained from literature are shown as other symbol types. The base map was made with Natural Earth (naturalearthdata.com). The contour relief and river data for Yugyd Va National Park region were obtained from the Institute of Biology of Komi Scientific Centre of the Ural Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences (ib.komisc.ru). The map was prepared for publication by the authors of the article.

The Subpolar Urals are part of the Ural Mountains and run from the headwaters of the Lyapin (Khulga) River in the north (65°40'N) to Telposiz Mountain in the south (64°0'N). The mountainous area covers about 32,000 km². There are two main watersheds of the Subpolar Urals: Narodo-Itinsky in the east, with a length of more than 100 km and Issledovatelsky in the west, with a length of more than 150 km. The northern continuation of the Issledovatelsky Range is the Rossomakha Ridge. Traces of glaciation are manifested in the large irregularities of these ridges. The slopes of the mountains are composed of stone placers. The Subpolar Urals are characterised by ridges with high altitudes and alpine landforms. The average height of the peaks is 1300-1400 m. The highest point of the Urals is located at Narodnaya Mountain (1,896 m). The Subpolar Urals have a pronounced asymmetry in their slopes: the eastern slopes of the Subpolar Urals gradually pass into the lowland wetlands of the West Siberian Lowland region, whereas the ridges of the western slopes end abruptly at the Pechora Plain (Chibilev 2011, Taskaev 2006).

The Northern Urals begin at the northern foothills of Telposiz Mountain (1,617 m, 63°55'N) and stretch in a southward direction to Lyalinsky Kamen Mountain (851 m, 59°15'N). The Northern Urals are characterised by having a smooth topography with a maximum elevation of not more than 1,619 m above sea level (Telposiz Mountain). Along the western side of the Northern Urals, there is a long strip of foothills, most of which only rise 200-300 m above sea level (Chibilev 2011, Taskaev 2006).

The rivers in these regions mainly flow through a narrow valley in which floodplains are often poorly expressed. The bottoms of the rivers are covered by pebbles and rocks.

The vertical zonation of the Subpolar and Northern Urals consists of four belts: dark coniferous taiga, light forest belt, mountain tundra and a cold goltsy desert belt. The vegetation of the mountainous dark coniferous taiga is formed mainly by Picea obovata and Betula pubescens mixed with Abies sibirica and Pinus sibirica. These forests differ from the plain dark coniferous taiga by there being less waterlogging, with a predominance of green moss and herb vegetation types. The vegetation cover of the light forest belt has a high level of diversity. Here, the complex of light forests, bushes and meadows is presented. The upper boundary of forests is formed by Picea obovata, Abies sibirica, Pinus sibirica, Betula pubescens and Larix sibirica. The timber line in the Southern part of the park passes at an altitude of about 700 m and, in the Northern part, it falls to 400–200 m. Bushes are represented by communities from Salix species, Betula nana, Juniperus sibirica (in the Southern part of the reserve) and Duschekia fruticosa (in the Northern part). Mountain meadows do not cover large areas and establish mainly ecotopes with rich and humid soils at stream runoffs, valleys and the borders of the stony fields. Mountain tundra communities are located at flat plates and mountain terraces of the upper part of slopes. The cold goltsy desert belt in the Subpolar Urals begins at 300–700 m, in the Northern Urals – at 1000–1100 m (Chibilev 2011, Taskaev 2006).

The climate in this part of the Urals is strongly continental. The meridional location of the ridges has a significant effect on the climate by preventing the movement of moist air masses from west to east. The Subpolar and Northern Urals are distinguished from other parts of the Urals by the relatively abundant precipitation they receive (up to 1,500 mm per year). Most of the precipitation falls in the summer months, from June to August (40-50%). In winter, about 30-40% of the annual precipitation falls. The average monthly temperature of the coldest month (January) in these mountains ranges from -18°C to -20°C, while that of the warmest month (July) is +10°C. The duration of the summer period is 60-75 days (Ponomarev and Pystina 2009)

63.178 and 65.815 Latitude; 58.712 and 61.479 Longitude.

All mosses were identified to species.

The coverage of the checklist spans the phylum Bryophyta. The highest number of records are from the Bryopsida (84.5%), followed by the Sphagnopsida (8.9%), Polytrichopsida (5.3%), Andreaeopsida (1%) and Tetraphidopsida (0.3%). The top ten families, in terms of the number of species included, comprise about 62% of the species. The top ten families, in terms of the number of occurrences recorded, comprise 77% of the occurrences (Table 2). Of these two groups of top ten families, 60% were included in both groups (Figs 2, 3).

Figure 2.  

Taxonomic distribution of species amongst moss families in the dataset. The figure was prepared with the “treemap” package in R (Tennekes 2017)

Figure 3.  

Taxonomic distribution of occurrences amongst moss families in the dataset. The figure was prepared with the “treemap” package in R (Tennekes 2017).

The moss flora of Yugyd Va National Park contains a high number of species, especially taking into account the fact that surveys of the whole territory have not yet been concluded because of the inaccessibility of the region. Although the present survey cannot be considered as complete, the high number of recorded taxa, 302 species belonging to 112 genera and 36 families, already points towards richness of the moss flora of the area. Most of the species are typical members of the Boreal and Holarctic bryoflora and endemic taxa were not recorded. According to available data, the known moss flora of Yugyd Va National Park comprises 60% of the entire known moss flora of the Komi Republic (Zheleznova and Shubina 2012), 25.6% of that of Russia (Ivanov et al. 2017), 16.3% of that of Europe and 1.5% of that of the world (GBIF.org 2018). In the investigated territory, 17 rare species of mosses that are included in the Red Data Book of the Komi Republic (Taskaev 2009) have been revealed and three of these species (Stereodon plicatulus, Bryum rutilans and Pseudocalliergon lycopodioides) are included in the Red Data Book of European Bryophytes (European Committee for the Conservation of Bryophytes (ECCB) 1995).

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