Mining and Industrial Landscapes of Podillia as Potential Structural Elements of the Regional Eco-Network

Abstract

The current state of the environment caused by irrational nature management necessitates the search for new approaches in the field of restoration and protection of biotic and landscape diversity. The new strategy for its protection is an ecological network that is being developed in Ukraine according to European requirements at the national, regional, and local levels. An integral part of the national eco-network is the territory of Podillia, for which an important topical issue is increasing the productivity of ecosystems and stabilising the ecological balance. One of the ways to optimise the regional eco-network of Podillia is to search for promising territories and include them in structural elements that will ensure its spatial integrity and representativeness. The most common objects of mining and industrial landscapes are quarrydump complexes that are original in their origin, structure, conditions, natural properties, spatial location, features of the geological structure, the nature of the biotic-landscape structure, and economic development. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to identify and describe the specific features of mining and industrial landscapes that require a set of measures for renaturalisation (reclamation, restoration of natural vegetation, reintroduction, etc.) within the latitudinal Buzhotsko-Buzko-Vovksko-Smotrytskyi eco-corridor of the regional eco-network of Podillia. General scientific (analysis, synthesis), laboratory and field methods, monitoring, comparison and statistical processing methods were used in this study. Factors of influence for the restoration of disturbed ecosystems of mining and industrial landscapes of Podillia were determined on the example of the Andriikovetskyi sand quarry and dump complex. It is established that edaphic conditions, elemental composition and organic matter content in the newly formed substrate, atypical relief, which differs sharply from the natural one, have the greatest influence. With the implementation of a set of measures for renaturalisation, the proposed quarry-dump complex can become a centre of zonal biodiversity as a renewable site – as a structural element of the regional eco-network