Mechanisms of Forest Ecosystems Sustainability in a Changing Climate

Kolomyts Erland Georgievich, Russian, born January 27, 1936, in the Bashkir Au-tonomous Soviet Socialist Republic, in the family of agricultural workers. In 1960, he graduated from Moscow State University, Faculty of Geography, in the specialty of "phys-ical geography". In the following 20 years, he studied geography and the physics of snow cover in Siberia and in the Far East at different institutions of the Russian Academy of Sci-ences. In May, 1964, he defended Cand. Sci. Dissertation at the Institute of Geography.

In December, 1972, E.G. Kolomyts defended the D. Sci. Dissertation at the Faculty of Geography, Moscow State University. His scientific activity in that period was aimed at developing the studies of landscape indication snow structure and avalanche studies on the basis of crystallography. Many-year stationary and expeditionary winter studies in Siberia, the Far East, the Far North and Great Caucasus resulted in the development of the theory and methods of analysis of the crystal structure and evolution of snow cover, which was a basis for avalanche forecasts.

Since early 1980s, E.G. Kolomyts worked at the High Mountain Geophysical Insti-tute of Russian Federal Service of Hydrometeorology and Environment Monitoring (Nal-chik, Kabardino-Balkaria) as a Head of the Laboratory of High Mountain Geoecology.

Since 1990, he hase worked at the Institute of Ecology of the Volga River Basin of the Russian Academy of Sciences (Togliatti). As Head of the Laboratory of Landscape Ecolo-gy, he is closely engaged in the problems of landscape ecology, environmental modeling and prediction being the subjects of his scientific interest at present. After 2018, E.G. Ko-lomyts moved (by age) to the position of chief researcher of this institute, Since 2021 he is concurrently a leading researcher at the Institute for Fundamental Problems of Biology at the Pushchino Scientific Center of the Russian Academy of Sciences.

During this period, E.G. Kolomyts hase developed: (a) the scientific and methodical principles of research of bio-geographical and landscape ecotones as the primary objects for studying human impact on the environment; (b) the theoretical and methodical bases for studying the organization of natural complexes based on the data of large-scale land-scape-ecological surveys using the methods of mathematical modeling and large arrays of empirical information; (c) the strategy and methods of quantitative analysis of organiza-tion, stability and anthropogenic dynamics of forest ecosystems; and (d) the theoretical ba-ses and methods of regional and local landscape-ecological prediction. In addition, the pre-dictive landscape-ecological scenarios have been created for the forest zone of the Volga River basin and the northern macro-slope of Great Caucasus, with construction of the re-spective forecast maps.

His research into the theory of geographical zonality based on the regional empirical modeling and system analysis resulted in creating a concept of polymorphism (polystruc-ture) of landscape-zonal systems. The concept opens the way to transition from a single model of natural-territorial organization to numerous models giving a more diversified pat-tern of differentiation and integration processes in the biosphere.

The results of his research have been most comprehensively presented in the follow-ing monographs:

(1) Snow Cover of the Mountain-taiga Landscapes of the North of Transbaikalia. Lenin-grag: Nauka, 1966. 183 p. (in Russian).

(2) Structure of Snow and Landscape Indication. Moscow: Nauka, 1976. 206 p. (in Rus-sian);

(3) Methody of Crystallomorphological analysis of snow structure. Moscow: Nauka. 1977. 199 p. (in Russian)

(4) Crystallomorphilogical Atlas of Snow. A Handbook for Snow Avalanche Stations. Leningrad: Gidrometeoizdat, 1984. 214 p. (in Russian). Translate from the Russian to Eng-lish by C.E. Bartelt (1997).

(5) Landscape studies in transition zones. Moscow: Nauka, 1987. 120 p. (in Russian).