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Natural Recovery of Terrestrial Ecosystems after the Cessation of Industrial Pollution: 1. A State-of-the-Art Review

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Abstract

In recent decades, atmospheric emissions from industrial enterprises have been reduced in many countries, which makes it possible to analyze the patterns of ecosystem recovery. The review provides an annotated list of studies of natural recovery (i.e., without involving any reclamation measures) of terrestrial ecosystems near industrial plants that have ceased or significantly reduced their emissions. Seventy-three studies of biota recovery (70 publications) performed near 22 plants (mainly metallurgical ones) have been identified; other 18 and 14 studies deal with analysis based on repeated records of the dynamics of the content of pollutants in plants and animals and in soils, respectively. Numerous gaps in the knowledge of natural recovery have been revealed: uneven study of different biomes and ecosystem types, fragmentariness (absence) of data on many taxa, the prevailing number of single-component studies within a specific area, and dominance of relatively short observation series with a small number of time points. These gaps make it so far impossible to generalize data on a global scale. Shortcomings in the presentation of results in publications (incomplete data on the dynamics of emissions and dates of material collection) also make it difficult to generalize data.

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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I am grateful to E.A. Bel’skaya, E.A. Bel’skii, I.E. Bergman, D.V. Veselkin, Yu.A. Davydova, I.N. Korkina, I.N. Mikhailova, S.V. Mukhacheva, G.Yu. Smirnov, T.V. Strukova, and M.R. Trubina for discussion and comments on the article.

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This review was supported by the Russian Foundation for Basic Research (Project no. 20-14-50025).

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  1. Institute of Plant and Animal Ecology, Ural Branch, Russian Academy of Sciences, 620144, Yekaterinburg, Russia

    E. L. Vorobeichik

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Vorobeichik, E.L. Natural Recovery of Terrestrial Ecosystems after the Cessation of Industrial Pollution: 1. A State-of-the-Art Review. Russ J Ecol 53, 1–39 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1134/S1067413622010118

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