Comprehensive environmental monitoring of the “First forest” land of the Shcherbakovsky Nature Park

One of the most dangerous problems of our time is the anthropogenic and general climatic degradation of natural ecosystems, which also affects the general state of the technosphere. The change in this trend largely depends on monitoring and practical environmental and restoration measures, in which specially protected areas play an important role. In addition to preserving natural landscapes and rare species, these territories act as natural remediators of high-ranking ecosystems, as well as often as reference cenoses providing a comparative analysis of ecological dynamics. The article presents the results of impact-integrated monitoring of the state of typical landscapes in the southern part of the Shcherbakovsky Nature Park. The main purpose of the creation of the park was to preserve the unique natural and territorial complex “Shcherbakovskaya Bend of the Volga.” The nature park was created in order to maintain a high level of landscape and biological diversity in the Shcherbakovskaya Bend of the Volga, a specific territory of the southern spurs of the Volga Upland in the steppe-forest-steppe ecotone zone located near the concentration centers of rare plant and animal species on the border of the Middle and Lower Volga regions. The uniqueness of the nature of the Shcherbakovskaya bend consists of a combination of various natural complexes and objects: landslide mounds, karst fields, virgin tipchak-kovyl steppes, upland and bayrach forests, and valley ecosystems. The publication provides information on the soil-relief characteristics of the object of research and associated plant and faunal communities that affect the integrated system of climatic indicators, as well as information on the degree of chemical pollution of water bodies - the Volga River and the Dobrinka River flowing into it. One of the results of the study was also the discovery, among other Red Book species of animals and plants, of a species not previously described for the Shcherbakovsky Nature Park: the Kroatsky hawk moth.