Study of the peculiarities of the coenopopulation of Halocnemum strobilaceum (Pall.) Bieb. in Volgograd region

Halocnemumstrobilaceum (Pall.) Bib. is a perennial grayish-green subshrub. The plant has rooting branches, which forms curtines up to two meters and belongs to salt-accumulating hypergalophytes. H. strobilaceum dominates desert and desert-steppe communities. Its cenopopulations spatial structure and ontogenetic composition can be used for analyzing the state of phytocenosis in general, but also for identifying features of living conditions. For example, H. strobilaceum is an indicator of gas and oil content (plant in this case is in a state of dwarfism and depression under conditions of high bituminosity), groundwater in the desert (thickets are formed), water body salinization, but primarily it‘s used as a permanent indicator of saline soils, because its development optimal is higher than 0.6-1.0 %. Ecological scales is one of those methods, which used to characterize the phytoindication properties of species coenopopulations. This study contains the investigation results of the cenopopulation of H. strobilaceum in the territory adjacent to the VAO “Himprom”, Kirov district, Volgograd city. The cenopopulation was characterized bysuch factors as soil moisture and acidity, cryoclimatic, thermoclimatic, salt regime, continental and arid climate, soil moisture variability, illumination / shading. Others research methods included Ripley‘s function and local density map. The study found that H. strobilaceumcenopopulation was aging and had a random spatial pattern, which indicates natural, stable living conditions, which means that it occupied its fundamental ecological niche. Under these conditions, the species is stenovalent to such parameters as illumination / shading, soil moisture variability and soil acidity. Therefore, H. strobilaceum can be used as a phytoindicator of the habitat by the above characteristics.