Floristic Features of the Coastal Zone of Lakes in the “Altyn-Dala” Nature Reserve

INTRODUCTION

More than 48,000 natural lakes are found in Kazakhstan, about 90% of which are small lakes with an area of less than 1 km². The total surface area of lakes in Northern Kazakhstan exceeds 19,000 km². This region includes more than 11,000 freshwater lakes and about 2,500 saline lakes with water surface areas ranging from 0.01 to 50 km² or more (Palgov, 1960; Shnitnikov & Smirnova, 1975).

In northern Kazakhstan, many lakes were formed in the depressions of ancient rivers. On the Turgai Plateau, the formation of small basins and steppe saucer-like depressions is associated with suffosion and subsidence processes and, in some places, with ancient thermokarst processes in frozen strata. These lakes are sustained by snowmelt and groundwater feeding. Typically, they are arranged in chains and have an elongated shape. One such chain occupies the ancient valley of the Turgai River. It begins with Lake Kushmurun, includes Lake Sarykopa, and ends with a group of small lakes filled with water during the flooding of the Turgai River. This entire chain of freshwater and saline water bodies, with shores overgrown with reeds or bordered by salt marshes, stretches for more than 500 km (Myakisheva et al., 2013).

These lakes play a key role in seasonal migrations of wetland and water birds along the Tobol–Ishim interfluve and the Turgai depression, and they serve as important nesting habitats for aquatic bird species.

In November 2012, the State Nature Reserve “Altyn-Dala” was established in the Amangeldin and Zhangeldin districts of the Kostanay Region with a total area of 489,766 hectares (Bragina & Bragin, 2002; Altyn-Dala Conservation Initiative, 2008; Government of the Republic of Kazakhstan, 2012).

Aquatic and coastal plants are an important component of natural ecosystems and have considerable ecological and economic significance. The intensification of anthropogenic and technogenic impacts, as well as global warming, leads to changes in the floristic composition of aquatic and coastal vegetation, which makes it necessary to conduct an inventory of the floristic composition (Berger et al., 2024; Figueroa-Valverde et al., 2024; Grant & Wallace, 2024; Hodoșan et al., 2024; Almeida et al., 2025; Alves et al., 2025; Lee et al., 2025a, 2025b; Pacheco et al., 2025; Tuleutaev & Kerim, 2025).

The aim of the present study was to investigate the floristic composition of natural lakes in the Turgai floristic district located in the Kostanay Region and included within the “Altyn-Dala” Nature Reserve.

MATERIALS AND METHODS

The lakes under study are part of the endorheic Turgai-Irgiz and Uly-Zhylanshyk river basins. The aridity of the environment, along with the predominance of flat relief, has given the lakes their peculiar hydrographic character (Alavi et al., 2024; Fischer et al., 2024; Mitchell & Simmons, 2024; Muthanandam et al., 2024; Raju, 2024; Umarova et al., 2024; Ba et al., 2025; Cole et al., 2025; Herrera et al., 2025; Morales et al., 2025). The lakes get their water primarily from snow. Summer torrential rains do not generate major changes in water level since the water is virtually entirely lost through evaporation and infiltration. The unstable water level is linked to specific hydrological circumstances (Barinova et al., 2002; Institute of Hydrobiology and Ecology, 2016).

The study area belongs to the Turgai floristic district and largely coincides with the dry-steppe zone of the North Turgai province (Gvozdetsky & Nikolaev, 1971), occupying the northern half of the Turgai table country. In the west it adjoins the hilly plateau of the Trans-Ural region, and in the east, it borders the Kazakh uplands.

Annual precipitation ranges from 210–260 mm, while the sum of temperatures during the growing season reaches 2400–2800°C. The average temperature in January is −18°C, and in July, +23°C. The moisture coefficient in the northern part of steppe Turgai (in the subzone of dark chestnut soils) is 0.30–0.45.

The objects of the study were lakes belonging to the Turgai floristic district, partially located within the territory of the Sarykopa State Nature Reserve (Table 1).

Table 1. List of studied objects

From a methodological perspective, it is extremely important to determine the boundaries of a water body, which is particularly significant for the subarid zone of Kazakhstan, where the shoreline changes considerably (high water levels in spring and shallowing by autumn). Therefore, the floristic fragment of the flora of water bodies cannot be interpreted narrowly by considering only the hydrophilic element without including the list of coastal-aquatic plants (Rychin, 1948; Kuzmichev, 1992; Sviridenko, 2000; Kipriyanova, 2005; Durnikin, 2015).

The study of the floristic composition of lakes was carried out in three zones. The littoral zone was defined as the area from the water’s edge to the lower boundary of higher flowering plant growth (Fiure 1, I). Usually, the study was conducted from the shoreline to a depth of 1.5–2.0 m.

The supralittoral zone is the section of the shore periodically flooded during floods and exposed by autumn (Figure 1, II). Here a so-called ephemeretum is formed—a set of rapidly developing species in silty, periodically flooded, and dried coastal areas (Taran, 1993, 1995). According to R.J. Naiman et al. (1988, 1997), coastal plant communities provide insight into the diversity of species richness at various spatial and temporal scales since they maintain complex habitat patches created and destroyed by hydrological disturbances, which leads to an annual redistribution of species.

The lake terrace is an area usually not flooded in spring and serving as a transitional zone between the floodplain part and zonal vegetation; floristically it contains elements of both the supralittoral zone and zonal vegetation (Figure 1, III).

According to the degree of overgrowth of the littoral zone, the following groups are distinguished (Novikov & Tsaralunga, 2015):

I – non-overgrown (less than 1%);

II – weakly overgrown (1–10%);

III – moderately overgrown (11–25%);

IV – strongly overgrown (26–50%);

V – very strongly overgrown (51–95%);

VI – completely overgrown (100%).

Geobotanical descriptions were carried out in each of the three zones. The area of the sampling plot was 100 m². The total and partial projective cover (%) were determined (Lavrenko & Korchagin, 1976).

Qualitative plant accounting was conducted according to accepted methodologies (Greig-Smith, 1967; Rabotnov, 1992). The number of species (units), occurrence (%), and partial projective cover (%) were determined.

For the overall assessment of the coenotic position of a species, a complex indicator of species activity (%) is used, which reflects the degree of the species’ vital success in a given territory and represents one of the expressions of the “weight of the species” in the given flora (Kupriyanov et al., 2018).

The calculation of species activity was performed in the IBIS system (Zverev, 2007) using the formula:

(1)

where Act – calculated activity of the taxon for the monitoring area in percent (0÷100%);

N – number of sampling plots (elementary one-meter samples);

C – constancy of the taxon – the absolute number of sampling plots where the taxon was recorded;

A_i – projective cover of the taxon in the i-th sampling plot;

A_Σ – sum of the projective cover of the taxon across all sampling plots.

RESULTS AND DISCUSSION

The littoral zone is represented by 22 species belonging to macrophytes (Table 2).

Table 2. Floristic features of the most active species of the littoral fraction of the flora of the lake shores of Turgai (n=10)

The highest activity within the littoral zone is shown by Phragmites australis, which in most lakes forms either a wide belt or occurs in patches. On average, its occurrence reached 50%, projective cover 13.3%, and activity 25.79%. With a considerable gap, the following species are recorded: Schoenoplectus tabernaemontani – activity 14.83%, and Potamogeton perfoliatus – activity 14.32%. Among other species with relatively high activity, it should be noted Butomus umbellatus – activity 6.78%, Eleocharis palustris – activity 6.63%, and Potamogeton crispus – activity 6.24%.

The species composition is mainly represented by hydro-hygrophytes (72.7%), among which the most common are Butomus umbellatus, Eleocharis palustris, Phragmites australis, Schoenoplectus tabernaemontani, Typha latifolia, and others. Hydrophytes are represented by a smaller number (6 species), among which the most common are Myriophyllum spicatum, M. verticillatum, Potamogeton crispus, P. lucens, P. perfoliatus, and Salvinia natans.

Supralittoral Zone. The supralittoral zone is represented by 53 species (Table 3).

Table 3. Floristic features of the most active species of the supralittoral fraction of the flora of the lake shores of Turgai (n=10)

In the supralittoral zone, Agrostis stolonifera has the highest projective cover (15.0%), occurrence (40%), and activity (24.49%). Its intensive vegetative reproduction is facilitated by moderate trampling of the coastal zone by livestock. In the supralittoral zone of fresh or slightly saline lakes, high activity is observed for Phragmites australis (18.97%), Bolboschoenus planiculmis (10.39%), and Xanthium strumarium (10.25%). In the supralittoral zone of saline water bodies, high activity is characteristic of Chenopodium urbicum (13.9%), Salicornia perennans (6.24%), Halimione verrucifera (4.00%), and Suaeda corniculata (3.87%). Such a ratio of species is typical for lake depressions of the “Altyn-Dala” Nature Reserve (Rachkovskaya & Nelina, 2018). 

The flora of lake terraces includes 65 species (Table 4).

Table 4. Floristic features of the most active species of the supralittoral fraction of the flora of lake terraces of the Turgai lakes (n=10)

A specific feature of lake terraces is the combination of species from the supralittoral zone and communities of zonal vegetation (Castellano-Rioja et al., 2024; Mitchell & Simmons, 2024; Thompson et al., 2024; Umarova et al., 2024; Zielinska & Kowal, 2024; Ahmed et al., 2025; Figueroa-Valverde et al., 2025; Gurung & Rai, 2025; Schneider & Krüger, 2025; Smith et al., 2025). On lake terraces composed of light, non-saline sandy-loam soils, the highest projective cover (11.0%) and activity (20.98%) are recorded for Elytrigia repens, while Festuca valesiaca shows an activity of 12.55%. On the terraces of saline lakes, the highest activity is characteristic of halophytic plants: Suaeda corniculata (16.25%), Halimione verrucifera (11.83%), Artemisia serotina (10.25%), and Aeluropus littoralis (10.10%).

The total floristic list of the shores of the studied lakes includes 108 species, belonging to 76 genera and 29 families of higher vascular plants (Table 5).

Table 5. Systematic composition of the flora of the lake shores of Turgai

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