2025 Ecosystem Transformation 8 (1), 123-144

Long-term changes in the composition and structure of the pseudolittoral macrophytobenthos in the intense eutrophication environment of the Southern Coast of Crimea (Black Sea)

Belich T.V.  , Sadogurskiy S.Ye., Sadogurskaya S.A.

As a result of monitoring studies in 1991–2022, carried out in the marine pseudolittoral (PSL) of one of the recreational and tourist centers of the Southern Coast of Crimea (SCC), it was established that the summer plant communities of macrophytobenthos differed in composition and structure from year to year. It was shown that this is due to changes in the level of eutrophication of the coastal marine water area by wastewater, the amount of which and extent of pollution from which depend on the number of tourists and the damage to the sewage treatment plants (STP). In the 1990s, during a threefold decrease in the number of tourists, communities of mesosaprobic brackish-water-marine representatives of Chlorophyta, typical of moderately eutrophic waters, were replaced by polydominant communities formed mainly by oligosaprobic marine representatives of Rhodophyta. As a result, the composition of the flora and the nature of the vegetation cover of the PSL came as close as possible to those characteristic of the natural or slightly transformed water areas of the Southern Coast of Crimea.

T. V. Belich
Nikitsky Botanical Garden – National Scientific Center of the Russian Academy of Sciences
Nikitsky Spusk St. 52, Nikita Settlement, Yalta, 298648 Russia

belich@yandex.ru

S. Ye. Sadogurskiy
Nikitsky Botanical Garden – National Scientific Center of the Russian Academy of Sciences
Nikitsky Spusk St. 52, Nikita Settlement, Yalta, 298648 Russia


S. A. Sadogurskaya
Nikitsky Botanical Garden – National Scientific Center of the Russian Academy of Sciences
Nikitsky Spusk St. 52, Nikita Settlement, Yalta, 298648 Russia

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