Cтепи України

During 2010, we revised herbarium specimens of arid lichens which already recorded in Red Data Book of Ukraine and also carried out field trips to steppe localities whitin Kherson region and Crimean peninsula. We fixed localities for 10 arid Red-Data-Book lichens (from total of 13): some of them are new, others ones confirm records from the 19th century, and some of the old known localities have now disappeared. We described population structure of arid terricolous lichens.

Our very first results were presented on International Conference “The Plant Kingdom in the Red Data Book of Ukraine: Implementing the Global Strategy for Plant Conservation” (October 2010, Kyiv), where we had an oral presentation “First steps for applying of IUCN Red Data List categories: experience with terricolous lichens of Ukraine”. We presented photos of arid Red Data Book lichens whitin the photo exhibition of the Conference. During this year we were in contact with the group “Save Ukrainian Steppes”, and already received some new steppe lichen records from amateurs, also there is information about our project and steppe lichens in website (http://pryroda.in.ua/step).

We are preparing a brochure “What do you know about steppe lichens – minute world under your foot”, which will be distributed in to all school with association of young biologists (ecologist) in steppe regions, biological faculty of universities, administration of protected areas and Ministry of Natural Protection. This will help us to collect new information about steppe lichen distribution and will improve level of ecological education of local population as well as will prepare mind of officers to pay more attention on lichens in steppe ecotopes.