Moss occurrences in Yugyd Va National Park, Subpolar and Northern Urals, European North-East Russia

Study Extent

This study was carried in the foothill and mountain landscapes of the Subpolar Urals, in the basins of four first-order tributaries of the Pechora River: the Kozhim River (in the Rosomakha, Maldynyrd, Zapadnye Saledy, Yuasnyrd, Maldyiz, and Obeiz mountain ranges), the Kosyu River (in the Vostochnye Saledy, and Kolokolenny mountain ranges), the Bolshaya Synya River (on Sablinskiy ridge), and the upper stream of the Shchugor River. The major tributaries of the Kozhim River studied were the Balbanyu River, Limbekoyu River, and Syvyu River. In the Kosyu River basin, the territories near its major tributary (the Vangyr River) and near the lakes Mezhgornye and Okunevye were studied. In the basin of the upper stream of the Bolshaya Synya River, the areas adjacent to its tributaries, including the Voyvozh-Synya River and the Lunvozh-Synya River, were studied. Mosses of the Northern Urals were collected in the basin of the Shchugor River (in the Telpos and Sumk-Ner mountain ranges, and on the mountains Telpos-iz, Yank-Kart-Tump, Vay-Khury-Tump, and Khodymalya-Tump) and two of its tributaries: the Podcherem River (Pelener Mountain) and the Telpos River.

Sampling

The authors contributing to the dataset used standard methods of mosses collection. The collecting localities were arbitrarily chosen in an attempt to include the largest number of different floristic associations and landscape forms in the samples. To achieve this purpose, a net of radial routes around each field base camp was planned. Short descriptions of plant communities were made in the localities of mosses collection. Moss samples were collected once and on each type of substrate. The results of this study were documented in the Herbarium (SYKO). In addition to the authors’ collections, the dataset includes information on moss occurrences obtained from sources in the published literature (Pole 1915, Zinserling 1935, Kildyushevskiy 1956, Gorchakovskii 1958, Kuvaev 1970, Dyachenko and Fomicheva 1986, Dyachenko 1997). More than 92% of the occurrence records were based on preserved samples from the Herbarium (SYKO). Some records (412) from locations adjacent to the border of the National Park were also included in the dataset.

Quality Control

The data were collected and identified by bryologists from the Institute of Biology of Komi Scientific Centre of the Ural Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences. Some moss specimens were identified by taxonomic specialists from the Komarov Botanical Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences, the Faculty of Biology of Lomonosov Moscow State University, and the Tsitsin Main Botanical Garden of the Russian Academy of Sciences.

Method steps

1. On each herbarium label, the following fields were filled out: “Scientific name”, “Locality” (with geographic coordinates), “Habitat”, “Substrate”, “Collector name”, “Determined by” (identification), “Collection date”, and “Catalogue Number”. For the data obtained from the literature, the descriptions given by the author(s) were converted into these herbarium label fields when possible. The dataset fields’ names were chosen according to Darwin Core (Wieczorek et al. 2012) and include the following: «occurrenceID», «cаtаlogNumber», «associatedReferences», «basisOfRecord», «kingdom», «phylum», «class», «family», «genus», «scientificName», «specificEpithet», «scientificNameAuthorship», «country», «countryCode», «recordedBy», «day», «month», «year», «locality», «identifiedBy», «decimalLatitude», «decimalLongitude», «coordinatePrecision», «coordinateUncertaintyInMeters», «georeferencedBy», and «geodeticDatum». References to the published literature from which data were obtained for the checklist compilation are presented in the “citations” section of the metadata. The herbarium label data were taken from the moss collection of the Herbarium (SYKO). All occurrence records were merged into one Microsoft Excel worksheet. The species names given were determined according to the “Check-list of mosses of East Europe and North Asia” (Ignatov et al. 2006). The unique values from the “Species” field were used as a preliminary Yugyd Va National Park mosses checklist. The preliminary checklist was verified on the “taxonomic name resolution service” (Boyle et al. 2013) with the help of the “taxize” package in the R environment (Chamberlain and Szocs 2013). In most cases, georeferencing was performed using paper maps of different scales. The maps were in the Kavrayskiy projection and SK-42 reference system. Maps with a 1:500000 scale were used for obtaining coordinates with 1-minute precision (3,903 occurrences). Maps with a scale of 1:100000 were used for obtaining 1-second-precision coordinates (269 occurrences). A remaining 22 occurrences were left ungeoreferenced because of the ambiguity of the locality description. All coordinates were transformed in the WGS 84 reference system with QGIS software. The coordinate uncertainty in meters for each occurrence was calculated with the Georeferencing Calculator (Wieczorek and Wieczorek 2015).

All mosses were identified to species. The coverage of the checklist spans the phylum Bryophyta. The highest number of records are from the Bryopsida (84.5%), followed by the Sphagnopsida (8.9%), Polytrichopsida (5.3%), Andreaeopsida (1%), and Tetraphidopsida (0.3%). The top ten families in terms of the number of species included comprise about 62% of the species. The top ten families in terms of the number of occurrences recorded comprise 77% of the occurrences. Of these two groups of top ten families, 60% were included in both groups.

1. Bryophyta
   rank: phylum
2. Bryopsida
   rank: class
3. Sphagnopsida
   rank: class
4. Polytrichopsida
   rank: class
5. Tetraphidopsida
   rank: class
6. Andreaeopsida
   rank: class
7. Amblystegiaceae
   rank: family
8. Andreaeaceae
   rank: family
9. Aulacomniaceae
   rank: family
10. Bartramiaceae
    rank: family
11. Brachytheciaceae
    rank: family
12. Bryaceae
    rank: family
13. Buxbaumiaceae
    rank: family
14. Calliergonaceae
    rank: family
15. Climaciaceae
    rank: family
16. Dicranaceae
    rank: family
17. Ditrichaceae
    rank: family
18. Encalyptaceae
    rank: family
19. Fissidentaceae
    rank: family
20. Fontinalaceae
    rank: family
21. Funariaceae
    rank: family
22. Grimmiaceae
    rank: family
23. Hedwigiaceae
    rank: family
24. Hylocomiaceae
    rank: family
25. Hypnaceae
    rank: family
26. Meesiaceae
    rank: family
27. Mniaceae
    rank: family
28. Mielichhoferiaceae
    rank: family
29. Plagiotheciaceae
    rank: family
30. Polytrichaceae
    rank: family
31. Pottiaceae
    rank: family
32. Pseudoleskeaceae
    rank: family
33. Pylaisiaceae
    rank: family
34. Pseudoleskeellaceae
    rank: family
35. Rhabdoweisiaceae
    rank: family
36. Rhytidiaceae
    rank: family
37. Scorpidiaceae
    rank: family
38. Sphagnaceae
    rank: family
39. Splachnaceae
    rank: family
40. Tetraphidaceae
    rank: family
41. Thuidiaceae
    rank: family
42. Timmiaceae
    rank: family

The length of Yugyd Va National Park is 280 km from North to South and 120 km from West to East. It is located on the western macroslopes of the Subpolar and Northern Urals. The Subpolar Urals are part of the Ural Mountains, and run from the headwaters of the Lyapin (Khulga) River in the north (65º40′N) to Telposiz Mountain in the south (64º0′N). The mountainous area covers about 32,000 km2. There are two main watersheds of the Subpolar Urals: Narodo-Itinsky in the east, with a length of more than 100 km, and Issledovatelsky in the west, with a length of more than 150 km. The northern continuation of the Issledovatelsky Range is the Rossomakha Ridge. Traces of glaciation are manifested in the large irregularities of these ridges. The slopes of the mountains are composed of stone placers. The Subpolar Urals are characterized by ridges with high altitudes and alpine landforms. The average height of the peaks is 1300-1400 m. The highest point of the Urals is located at Narodnaya Mountain (1,896 m). The Subpolar Urals have a pronounced asymmetry in their slopes: the eastern slopes of the Subpolar Urals gradually pass into the lowland wetlands of the West Siberian Lowland region, whereas the ridges of the western slopes end abruptly at the Pechora Plain. The Northern Urals begin at the northern foothills of Telposiz Mountain (1,617 m, 63°55′N) and stretch in a southward direction to Lyalinsky Kamen Mountain (851 m, 59°15’N). The Northern Urals are characterized by having a smooth topography with a maximum elevation of not more than 1,619 m above sea level (Telposiz Mountain). Along the western side of the Northern Urals there is a long strip of foothills, most of which only rise 200-300 m above sea level. The rivers in these regions mainly flow through narrow valley in which floodplains are often poorly expressed. The bottoms of the rivers are covered by pebbles and rocks. Large rounded boulders transported by ancient glaciers are also often found in the riverbeds. The vertical zonation of the Subpolar and Northern Urals consists of four belts: dark coniferous taiga, thin-wood forests with a predominance of larch, mountain tundra, and a cold goltsy desert belt. The vegetation of the mountainous dark coniferous taiga is formed mainly by Picea obovata and Betula pubescens mixed with Abies sibirica and Pinus sibirica. Submontane forests differ from the plain dark coniferous taiga by there being less waterlogging, with a predominance of green moss and grass vegetation types. As the altitude increases, the mountains’ forests are thinned and gradually pass into light forests. The upper boundary of the forests is formed by Larix sibirica, Abies sibirica, Pinus sibirica, and Betula pubescens. The cold goltsy desert belt in the Subpolar Urals begins at 300–400 m (Taskaev 2006, Chibilev 2011). The climate in this part of the Urals is strongly continental. The meridional location of the ridges has a significant effect on the climate by preventing the movement of moist air masses from west to east. The Subpolar and Northern Urals are distinguished from other parts of the Urals by the relatively abundant precipitation they receive (up to 1,500 mm per year). Most of the precipitation falls in the summer months, from June to August (40-50%). In winter, about 30-40% of the annual precipitation falls. The average monthly temperature of the coldest month (January) in these mountains ranges from -18 ºC to -20 ºC, while that of the warmest month (July) is +10 ºC. The duration of the summer period is 60-75 days (Ponomarev and Pystina 2009).