Local Landscape–Ecological Prognoses

This chapter expounds on the main statements of the original topo-ecological concept of prediction, “Global changes on the local level,” as a basis for local bio-ecological and geosystem monitoring under global anthropogenic climate changes. Predictions based on one of the extreme prognostic HadCM3 models (version A2) have been performed using an original method of discrete empirical statistical modeling of ecosystems. For plain territories of the temperate zone, it has been empirically established that the main channel of connections between regional and local ecosystems with the background climatic system passes through summer soil moisture content, which is a rather reliable geophysical indicator of the state of ecosystems, on the one hand, and the most powerful local ecological factor, on the other hand. Probabilistic scenarios of the expected changes in summer soil moisture content until the mid-twenty-second century and the respective structural and functional changes in forest ecosystems for different zonal/regional conditions of the Volga River basin are described. The predicted scenarios of intensive aridization of soil-plant cover as a general process of “savannization” of the sub-zone of broadleaf and mixed forests zone of the Russian Plain are described.