Temperate dry forests of Eastern Transcaucasia - Tertiary relict vegetation of a "pre-Mediterranean" type?
Thomas Denk
The planned Vashlovani Nature Reserve is situated in southeastern Georgia, Kakheti region, close to the Azerbaijanian border. It has long been well-known for its richness in large mammals, such as bear, wolf, hyena, lynx, gazella, and birds, e.g. all 4 species of western palaearctic vultures. Moreover, it represents one of the few, if not the only, western Eurasian areas, where Savannah-like forests are still present. In southwestern Asia and Central Asia such temperate dry forests are at present found in very small parts of Anatolia, extending to the east to Tajikistan, eastern Afghanistan, and a few dry parts of the western Himalayas. In the Vashlovani Nature Reserve these forests contain a high number of "Mediterranean" elements, such as Juniperus foetidissima, J. rufescens, Jasminum fruticans, Periploca graeca, Punica granatum, and Cotinus coggyria, along with Central Asiatic elements as Pistacia mutica and Caragana grandifolia, whereas Euro-Siberian elements, like Euonymus verrucosus and Cornus sanguinea are restricted to more humid gorges.An outcrop yielding fossil plants from the Pliocene (around 3 Ma old) is situated in the nature reserve. This makes it possible to directly compare fossil and living vegetation in the Vashlovani area. This is all the more significant, since fossil plant assemblages from this area, described by Kolakovski and Ratiani (1967), have been known to contain the most Mediterranean elements in the Late Tertiary of western Eurasia. Therefore, the Vashlovani area may act as a model for pre-Mediterranean vegetation and its differentiation into the modern Mediterranean vegetation and eastern continental vegetation. Moreover, it represents an ideal area for studying the climatic development in eastern Transcaucasia from the Pliocene until today.
In an ongoing project we are mapping the modern vegetation and some groups of animals (amphibians, reptiles, and various beetle families), studying the plant fossils from the Pliocene, and comparing the modern and the fossil vegetation with respect to past and present distribution ranges of the taxa involved, and differentiation of Tertiary vegetation types into the modern Mediterranean, eastern continental and temperate vegetation zones.
Coworkers:
Norbert Frotzler, Vienna
Irina Shatilova, Tbilisi
Paata Shanshiashvili, Tbilisi
Find out more:
Humid temperate forests and wetlands of Georgia, Transcaucasia
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