Regional and Local Geosystems as the Initial Objects of Ground Geoecological Monitoring

The chapter expounds on the main statements of the original topo-ecological concept of prediction, “global changes at the local level,” as a basis of local bioecological and geosystem monitoring under global anthropogenic climatic changes. The causal mechanisms of local response to global and regional signals have been established by identifying the transfer functions in landscape connections, which transform signals when they pass through conjugated ensembles of natural complexes and their components. The base and forecast analysis was based on the materials of large-scale landscape-ecological surveys carried out at eight experimental test sites of the Middle Povolzhye. Test sites embrace a wide range of zonal transitions from mixed forests to the northern steppe on the Russian Plain. It resulted in (1) discrete empirical-statistical models of structural–functional organization of forest biogeocoenoses in different zonal conditions, (2) models of empirical simulation of the regional bioclimatic trend by local-level ecosystems, and (3) models of functional and structural transformations of forest ecosystems under the given scenarios of global climate forecasts. It has been established empirically that the main channel of connections of regional and local ecosystems with the background climatic system passes through the summer soil moisture content, which serves as a rather reliable geophysical indicator of the state of ecosystems, on the one hand, and is the most powerful ecological factor predetermining their functional parameters, on the other hand.