The Impact of Climate Change and Regulation of the Water Regime on the Morphological Structure of the Floodplain Forests in Petržalka, Slovakia

Abstract The main landscape-forming component has always been the forests in the lowlands. The devastation and disturbance of forest areas by anthropogenic activity change the ecological conditions in their environment. Climate and atmospheric changes affect the balance of the mutual relationships between individual components, as well as the existence of direct and feedback relationships in forest ecosystems. The transformation of bioclimatic and ecological conditions have caused the degradation of the Pannonian floodplain forest communities in Slovakia. Urbanization in Bratislava has caused the fragmentation of the surrounding forests. With changes in sunlight and heat conditions, flood-plain communities are forced to become acclimatized to drier conditions, which lead to morphological and structural changes in their composition. In this study we examined phytocenological records from 1999 to 2020 from various sources. The survey points to the impact of climate change and anthropogenic influences on biodiversity. The absence of floods and the drying of floodplain forest soils could have caused this change in the species' composition.