Ecological scales of indicator plants in an industrial region

Abstract

The article presents the results of a long-term monitoring experiment (26 years) to identify indicator plants and their indices for assessing the state of ecosystems in the industrial region of Eastern Europe – Donbass. Ecological scales are discrete calculated or metric indicators that are important for quantification and examination of anropogenically transformed ecotopes. It is proposed to use four categories of ecological scales with a different mechanism for calculating the indices and different conditions of the experiment: 1) the principle of varying absolute metric parameters, 2) the calculated principle of correspondence of the percentage value; 3) the indices of the survival strategy implementation (vegetative and reproductive success); 4) the frequency of occurrence (or appearance) of characteristic features or the degree of specialization of functional discrete structures. Names of plant species of Donbass are given and their characteristics of variation are indicated in fractional 10-point scales.