Vegetation dynamics of the Norilsk industrial region under the influence of aerotechnogenic and natural factors

This study focuses on the transformation of vegetation, degraded over vast areas due to industrial air pollution from the Norilsk metallurgical combine. To assess the current state of ecosystems, we employed a vegetation map that was compiled using median composites of summer imagery 2015–2021 from the Sentinel 2B satellite. The field data collected by a team of geographers from Moscow State University in 2021 was also considered. The analysis of the transformation of vegetation during the operation of the mining and smelting plant is based on a comparison of the vegetation map with the materials of field studies of the same team in 1997 and the vegetation classification based on Landsat images from 1995, taking into account earlier materials such as topographic maps of 1960 and 1977, and forest pathological surveys of the 1980s. For comparison with less detailed materials of previous years, the 2015–2021 map was transformed: similar mosaics of contours were identified on it. This provided the basis for identifying areas with a similar character of vegetation disturbance caused by industrial air pollution. Such areas were then combined into exposure profiles, which allowed us to analyze the transformation of vegetation at different distances and directions from the plant—in accordance with the prevalent winds. The successive replacement of dead forests by shrub and dwarf shrub tundra, degraded dwarf shrub tundra, and technogenic grassy and stony wastelands, as recorded by the 2015–2021 map, was revealed. The substitution series manifest themselves differently in various directions from the combine. Grassy and stony wastelands on sites of dead forests are common within a range from 3 km to the northeast to 10–15 km to the northwest and west and up to 25 km to the southeast of Norilsk. The development of vegetation observed during modern climate warming varies in different replacement zones of dead forests.