FLUCTUATING ASYMMETRY OF WOODY PLANTS IN URBAN ECOSYSTEMS OF THE CITY OF TULA: EMPIRICAL RESEARCH

Currently, the problem of environmental pollution is becoming more and more urgent, especially in large industrial cities. In order to take timely measures and reduce the negative impact on the environment, constant monitoring of its condition is necessary. Now bioindication methods have become especially popular, allowing to determine the state of the ecosystem by the state of individual indicator species. In our work, we decided to consider plants of several species and then compare the results obtained and conduct a comprehensive assessment of the state of ecosystems of the city of Tula. The purpose of this paper was to assess the quality of the environment for three territories with different types of anthropogenic impact, using an integral indicator of the stability of the development of silver birch and black poplar. A hypothesis was put forward that the magnitude of the fluctuating asymmetry of woody plants is associated with an unfavorable state of the environment. For each site, the development stability index was calculated as the average value of fluctuating asymmetry across the entire sample. The level of anthropogenic load was estimated on the basis of the scale of plant condition deviations. As result we have confirmed the hypothesis that the magnitude of the fluctuating asymmetry of woody plants is associated with the unfavorable state of the environment. Thus, the highest index of fluctuating asymmetry was found in the industrial zone, the lowest in the recreational zone. The data obtained confirmed the possibility of using the method to assess the degree of contamination of the territory and can be used in practice.