The impact of modern global warming for forest ecosystems of Zhigulevsky massif (predictive empirical-statistical modeling)

Prognosis was made using a method worked out by the authors on the basis of three global prediction-climatic models - temperate GISS and E GISS and extremal HadCM3. The mechanisms of the response of local ecosystems to global hydrothermal signals through the summer moisture content of the soil are considered as the leading ecological communication channel. The trajectories of transformations of semi-humid and semi-arid forest ecosystems to the thermo-arid signal during forthcoming 100-200 years are described. A sharp transformation of mesophilic broadleaf biogeocoenoses of the Zhiguli plateau is predicted. They will be intensively decomposed and substituted by meadow steppe. The most xerophyte forest-meadow-steppe associations and pine broad-leaved forest will be aridity in still more greater degrees.