Biodiversity of higher and lower plants flora of the South Ural reserve, protection issues

In the article the questions of biodiversity of higher and lower plants in the territory of the South Ural State Nature Reserve are considered. The South Ural Reserve is located on the territory of the most elevated areas of the Southern Urals with a pronounced altitudinal zonality. Vegetation is represented by mountain dark coniferous, pine and broad-leaved forests, mountain bogs, sub-walnut meadows, loaches. The reserve was established in 1978 to preserve the unique natural complexes of the Southern Urals. The history of studying the flora of the central high-elevated part of the Southern Urals has been around for 250 years. The first botanical observations and descriptions of plants on the present territory of the reserve and in the immediate vicinity were performed by naturalists and travelers of the 18th and 19th centuries. Lepekhin (1770), I.G. Georgi (1773) and A.A. Lehmann (1839). A significant contribution to the knowledge of the highland flora was made by Yu.K. Shell (1878), who compiled the first annotated list of higher and lower plants. Botanists O.A. Fedchenko and B.A. Fedchenko in 1892 added a floristic list of a number of new species. The first brief description of the vegetation of the highland areas was cited by A.S. Mech (1895). In the first half of the 20th century, in the central part of the Southern Urals, studies of flora and vegetation, herbarium collections, were conducted by A.K. Noskov (1912), O.E. Knorring (1917-1918), E.G. Bobrov (1926), S.Yu. Lipshits (1927), S.N. Nedrigailov (until 1928), B.A. Tikhomirov (1940), L.A. Sokolov (1940), Ukrainian botanists M.I. Kotov, A.L. Lypa, D.K. Zerov and the Leningrad botanist V.I. Grubov (1942-1943). In the postwar years, a great contribution to the knowledge of the flora and vegetation of the high mountains of the Southern Urals was made by geobotanical studies of P.L. Gorchakovsky (1948-1950-ies.), Characterized the zonality and zonality of vegetation, highlighted the issues of endemism and relictness of the local flora. To date, 788 species of higher vascular plants belonging to 97 families, of which 705 species of natural flora and 83 adventitious species have been established on the territory of the reserve. To the relict are 59 species, of which Pliocene relics - 6, Pleistocene relics - 53. 24 endemic species have been identified, among which are high-mountain species. The flora of synanthropic and synanthropic habitats consists of 295 species of higher vascular plants belonging to 191 genus and 47 families. 183 mosses species of Bryopsyda and 41 - Marchantiophyta were found on the territory of the reserve. Bryopsyda mosses belong to 42 families and 97 genera, Marchantiophyta - to 15 families and 26 genera. During the study of the soil algal flora of the USGPZ, 68 species and varieties of cyanobacteria and algae belonging to 5 divisions, 11 classes, 16 orders, 25 families and 42 genera were found. The actual directions of botanical research on the reserve territory are issues of algae and mosses flora inventory, population-ecological studies of rare and other species of higher plants.