Journal articles on the topic 'Digression stages'

The meadows of the north-western part of the Kuznetsk Ala Tau belong to the association Carici ovalis—Deschampsietum cespitosae. The association is distributed in the forest belt in the humid areas of the Altay, Salair, and Kuznetsk Ala Tau. Two new sub­associations, C. o.—D. c. cirsietosum heterophylli and C. o.—D. c. amorietosum repentis, represent the two subsequent stages of the anthropogenic digression. The true meadows of the ass. Carici ovalis—Deschampsietum cespitosae are distinctly, both physiognomically and floristically separated from the tall-herb commu­nities; the «nucleus» of diagnostic species of the latter is common with the hemiboreal dark-coniferous moun­tain forest.

Recreational use of forest resources is the most important for urban green forests. Every year the problem of satisfying the population growing needs for recreation in the forest, while ensuring its preservation, acquires special relevance. The main function of Somovskoe Forestry (Voronezh region) is environmental protection, which includes the implementation of protective, water conservation, and recreational functions. Grass pine forests are the most comfortable for vacationers in Somovskoe forestry. In the study, the recreational potential of the Somovskoe Forestry (Voronezh region) has been estimated based on the methods of various authors, types of landscapes, types and forms of recreation, stages of digression, planning and aesthetic value. It has been revealed that most of the plantations are occupied with a closed type of l of horizontal closeness. The predominant class of aesthetic evaluation of the examined stands is II. The largest area is occupied by the strata with III and IV stage of digression. The main types of recreation in the stands of Somovskoe forestry are everyday and camping ones. The main forms are off-road and road ones. The predominant class of aesthetic assessment is II (65% ± 3.2). It is a plantation with reduced visibility and patency. The recreational potential of the studied artificial pine plantations is not higher than class II. Recommendations on regulating the movement of vacationers with the goal of hindering the "development" of the entire forest area, the development of measures to improve the culture and discipline of recreants, to increase the sustainability and productivity of plantations have been given on the basis of research results.

Nowadays, area decrease and pastoral digression enhance are determinative factors for the extinction of rare plants populations. Making their cumulative impact on rare fraction of meadow steppes, these negative factors govern 74.4 % of habitats richness in the Southern Opillya. Two models were built to demonstrate the process of rare species number reduction under stress of the negative factors. Model I (regression model) displays a graduate ten times reduction in rare plant diversity rate with increasing of the factors intensity. Model II was developed based on generalized dataset of rare species number in habitats. It reveals an abrupt reduction of rare plant richness at the very beginning of habitat degradation, also at the last stages of this process. A species composition of rare fraction of flora for meadow steppes at different degradation level is presented.

Large old trees are significant elements of forests, arboretums, botanical gardens and parks and perform a number of unique functions contributing to ecosystem integrity and biodiversity. At the same time human activities such as compaction of topsoil layers, deterioration of soil permeability and soil aeration drive the decline of large old trees. The human impact is also exacerbated by plants inevitable physiological age-specific changes. The presence of such old trees in urban environments brings great scientific promises enhancing a social, cultural and historical forest value, although these benefits increase responsibility for trees maintaining. Regarding old-growth trees historical, cultural, and environmental significance and their overall vulnerability, the individual-by-individual tree protection measures are required. Pedunculate oak (Quercus robur L.) is among the most widespread long-lived species in Europe, in particular in Ukraine. In Feofania (or Theophania) forest, that is an oak-hornbeam forest located in southern part in Kyiv, the age of the oldest oak trees reaches about 300 years. In this article, we aim to estimate vitality, overall condition, and recreational digression stages of pedunculate oak trees and to develop the recommendations to maintain and extend trees longevity in Feofania forest. We estimate the stages of recreational digression and vitality using an approach of Hensiruk et al. (1987) and Sanitary Regulations in forests of Ukraine (1995) respectively. The dendrochronological analysis is performed on core samples from sixteen age-old pedunculate oaks in order to determine their exact cambial age and to evaluate their growth rates. We use at least two cores per tree extracted at a height from 0.5 m to 1.3 m above ground level with an increment borer. The tree-ring widths are measured using AxioVision (Carl Zeiss) software to the nearest 0.01 mm. To identify false rings we employ stereomicroscope MBS-1. The individual tree-ring series are cross-dated, standardized and checked using the COFECHA program. Then we determine exact cambial age of oak trees as number of tree-rings in individual series. To estimate the age of trees with cores without pith we use a graphical method. The analyze is performed on 42 increment cores containing 7335 annual rings formed in the period from 1746 to 2016. Measured diameter of the age-old oaks ranges from 57.6 cm to 165.2 cm. The longest chronological series contains 271 years. The age of studied trees varies from 202 to 275 years averaging 175 years and radial growth ranges from 1.07±0.400 mm to 2.85±1.487 mm averaging 1.95±0.792 mm. In recent years the reduction of radial growth isn’t observed, although in a long time interval in five studied trees the rings width not exceeds the individual series average value. However, the growth rate reducing could not be regarded as critical for trees vitality because it is above 10 % of the average value yet. The evaluated mean increment coefficient is 5.13±1.482 years in cm that allows to estimate the age of dominant and codominant oaks in the association of Galeobdoloni luteae-Carpinetum in other forests. The estimated vitality is mostly of 6–7 points. Five oaks are in «satisfactory condition», nine oaks are «weakened», one oak is «very weakened» and one tree is «dying». «Weakened» trees are with mechanically damaged stem and are often suffered from leaves defoliation caused by Acrocercops brongniardella and Microsphaera alphitoides. Regarding wood samples maintenance, the «dying» oak stem is found rotted in its center. The recreational digression is at the stage 1–4. For eight oaks it is at the first stage, for four oaks at the second stage, for two oaks at the third stage and for two oaks at the fourth stage with 60 % destruction of the understorey. The number of age-old Q. robur trees is limited, thus measures to care could consider individual tree-specific features. Given trees vitality and stages of recreational digression, we develop the guidelines to preserve and extend trees longevity. We also propose to include four old-growth oaks in the list of monumental plants.

The forest belt of the KuznetskyAlatau eastern macro­slope consists of two subunits, namely the boreal-montane and the hemiboreal (sub)belts. In the upper one, the tall-herb communities of the class Mulgedio-Aconitetea are formed in place of the climax fir (Abiessibirica) forest. If being subject to regular mowing or grazing, these tall-herb communities are replaced by the «true» meadows of the ass. Trifoliopratensis—Alchemilletum vulgaris, order Arrhenatheretalia, whereas forest meadows of the ass. Trollioasiaticae—Poetumsibiricae replace the mixed forest composed of Pinussibirica, Piceaobovata, Betula pendula and a few of Larixsibirica in the lower subbelt. With the anthropogenic pressure increase, the «true» meadows of the ass. Filipenduloulmariae—Alchemille­tum vulgaris and then of the ass. Potentilloanserinae–Alchemilletum vulgaris (Arrhenatheretalia) represent the next two digression stages, respectively. Forest meadows of the ass. Hesperidosibiricae—Poetumsibiricae, similar to those of the forest-steppe belt, are formed on dry sunny slopes in the bottom part of the hemiboreal belt.

Recreation digression of forest ecosystems in the heritage site “White Sea Petroglyphs” was studied for the first time. This site is a compact system of rock outcrops partially cleared of forest vegetation, which bear Neolithic rock carvings (petroglyphs), and are linked together by walking trails. Patterns have been identified in the transformation of soils, plant cover components (tree stand, tree seedlings, understory and living ground cover), as well as fine roots (within 3 mm in diameter) of woody species under the recreation impact. Trampling was found to deform and destroy the top soil horizons, entailing a significant loss of the forest floor thickness and organic matter stores. Overall, the flora of the area is quite well preserved; 95–100 % of which is represented by native species. The living ground cover is noticeably damaged in the most actively used sites (fragments of trails and vista points). They feature a poor species composition, shrinking of the herb-dwarf shrub and moss-lichen cover, and a low percent cover of grassland and ruderal species. Easily accessible and actively visited sites have no or reducing amounts of tree seedlings, the tree stand is damaged and forest regeneration is hampered – the number of viable seedlings is minimal (100 pcs/ha). The mass of roots below 3 mm in diameter in heavily trampled trails showed a reduction of up to 74 %, while the root saturation in less affected trails slightly increased. Recreation transformations of the plant communities have not resulted in a loss of their resilience so far. The recreational digression in the studied sites was classified into stages I–III (weakly disturbed – strongly disturbed). Function zoning of the area should be modified using recreation-tolerant communities more intensively in order to reduce recreation impact. The most damaged areas, which are losing their stability, should be excluded from active use by modification of walking trails and building additional boardwalks.

The study of regression in autism spectrum disorders (ASD) is of particular importance, since it gets us closer to understanding some of the key mechanisms of ASD and makes it possible to operationalize the «penetrating» nature of this developmental disorder. The research uses the model of play behavior to study regressive episodes, which are associated with digression in the level of regulation by meanings and in deliberate organization of play behavior. The purpose of this study is to identify the factors and conditions that cause regressive behavior in children with ASD. Participants: preschool children (5—7 years old) — 18 children with ASD (4 girls and 14 boys) and 18 controls (5 girls and 13 boys). For the purposes of the research a role-playing game had been developed. The game consisted of four stages, in each stage a specific task was assigned to the child. Based on the results of the study a number of factors were revealed that provoke regressive behaviors and affect their number, among them: adoption of innovations, task switching, exhaustion, sensitivity to emotional stress.

The paper presents data on the state of soil and vegetation cover of oak forests of suburban forests near the village Mekhzavod. Being in the ring of large highways as well as located relatively close to Samara, they experience a complex impact of many adverse conditions. In the course of the study in these forest communities using the method of laying ecological profiles, we assessed a degree of recreational load impact on the vegetation cover of the green zone. The author estimated the percentage of road and path network development, described stages of recreational digression (for R.A. Karpisonova) and identified the main indicators of anthropogenic load, a vital status of major forest tree species and the factors contributing to its deterioration. The author also revealed a classification of soils with the help of laying soil profiles in different quarters and the subsequent chemical analysis of the selected samples. It is determined that the gray forest soils indicated for this area on the soil map of the Volga Region are not found. Taking into account the unsatisfactory state of the vegetation cover of the studied area, a number of recommendations for its rational use are proposed, which can further contribute to the preservation and improvement of these forests stability.

The diet spectrum of the song thrush (Turdus philomelos Brehm, 1831; Passeriformes, Turdidae) was studied with the aim of supporting the population of the species in transformed forests of North-Eastern Ukraine. Four forest ecosystems were surveyed: three model sites in oak woodlands with different stages of recreational digression, and the fourth model site in a pine-oak forest. A total of 45 invertebrate taxa with the dominance of Insecta (64.6%, n = 1321), Oligochaеta (16.7%), and Gastropoda (12.0%) were revealed in the diet of the song thrush. At the level of orders, Lepidoptera (66.2%) was dominant. In the qualitative structure of the song thrush nestling diet, the highest number of taxa (40.5–59.1%) was represented by phytophages. Phytophagous species also comprised the majority of the consumed prey items (44.7–80.3%). Environmental conditions are an important factor, affecting the diet composition of birds. The most favourable foraging conditions for the thrushes were revealed in natural protected areas. The analysis has shown a fairly even foraging efficiency of the thrushes in all the studied sites. The highest biodiversity indices were found in a protected area of the National Nature Park “Homilshanski Forests”. The results of the research indicate an important role of T. philomelos in the population management of potentially dangerous agricultural pests.

This article is devoted to analysis of the modern methods and methodology of research of publishing business history. The urgency of research is that the printed word is crucial in development of the independent Ukraine. It forms a socio-political thought, affects the mentality of the Ukrainian people, its spiritual life and revival of historical traditions and development of economy. The necessity of developing the chosen theme is also amplified due to the absence of a special study in the national science, which would include comprehensive system analysis of publishing business, combining all the interrelated components of publishing process. The methodological basis of the proposed research is the main principles of historicism and scientific objectivity, the main methods of scientific and historical knowledge, modern conceptual approaches to study phenomenon of small business in the context of publishing activities. This means the whole of general scientific and special methods and approaches, which can be divided into three main groups: methods of obtaining and accumulation of information; methods of generalization; methods that can explain the results and draw conclusions.The study of the object of analysis is impossible without a digression into the past and clarifying its roots. Consequently the author made an attempt to generalize methodological basis of research based on the main principles of historicism and scientific objectivity, the fundamental provisions of both domestic and individual foreign historical, philosophical and political concepts on the laws and certain specific features of formation and development of publishing. It is concluded that applying general scientific and special methods and approaches makes it possible to trace the main stages and trends in development of publishing business, to clarify its specificity, its role and place at different stages of its development. It is possible to carry out the research tasks as to a systematic and complex analysis of the state of small publishing business, its impact on development of civil society through formation of middle class and comprehensive democratization of all public and state institutions based on empirical and theoretical methods of research.

Статья содержит результаты обработки таксационного описания Шарташского лесного парка и результаты предпроектного ландшафтного анализа. Разработка предпроектного анализа необходима при правильном и эффективном распределении функционального зонирования территории лесного парка, выделении запретных для посещения зон с целью сохранения нарушенного биоценоза, определении наиболее привлекательных участков для целенаправленной организации рекреационной деятельности. В ходе исследований производились площадное разделение территории по оценочным классам показателей и расчет соотношений между классами к квартальной площади и общей площади лесного парка. При разработке предпроектного ландшафтного анализа учитывали характеристику насаждений: возраст, высоту и диаметры, класс бонитета, типы ландшафтов, рекреационную оценку и стадии рекреационной дигрессии. При анализе таксационных показателей в лесном парке выявлено превалирование приспевающих сосновых насаждений, образующих закрытый тип ландшафта с преобладанием средней рекреационной оценки и 1-й стадии рекреационной дигрессии. По результатам исследования отмечается, что на территории Шарташского лесного парка преобладают насаждения с высокими показателями по классам бонитета (II и III класс); обладающие «средней» и «высокой» рекреационной оценкой и 1-й и 2-й стадиями дигрессии. Однако наличие на территории выделов с 3-й стадией дигрессии свидетельствует о необходимости проведения мероприятий по контролю за рекреационным использованием территорий лесного парка. Результаты исследования применимы в разработке проектов благоустройства Шарташского лесного парка, анализе таксационных показателей за определенный временной промежуток, выявлении и определении динамики изменений показателей в естественной лесной среде. The article contains the results of processing the taxation description of the Shartashsky forest park and the results of pre-design landscape analysis. The development of pre-design analysis is necessary with the correct and effective distribution of functional zoning of the forest park, the allocation of areas prohibited for visiting in order to preserve disturbed biocenosis, and the identifi cation of the most attractive areas for targeted recreational activities. During the studies, the area was divided according to the estimated classes of indicators and the ratios between the classes to the quarterly area and the total area of the forest park were calculated. When developing pre-design landscape analysis, the characteristics of plantations were taken into account: age, height and diameters, bonitet class, types of landscapes, recreational assessment and stages of recreational digression. The analysis of taxation indicators in the forest park revealed the predominance of weighted-age pine plantations forming a closed type of landscape with the predominance of the average recreational assessment and the 1st stage of recreational digression. According to the results of the study, the predominance of low classes of taxi description indicators was noted on the territory of the Shartash Forest Park. Given the intensive visit to the forest park, low classes of taxi description indicators indicate insignifi cant changes in the forest environment of the territory under consideration. Nevertheless, the presence of allotments with overestimated indicators in the territory refl ects the need for measures to control the recreational use of the forest park.The results of the study are applicable in the development of projects for the improvement of the Shartashsky forest park, the analysis of taxation indicators over a certain time period, the identifi cation and determination of the dynamics of changes in indicators in the natural forest environment.

The article presents the results of the first two stages of the project on the assessment and mapping changes in the state of the Great Eurasian Natural Tract (GEANT) as a factor of global environmental stability and a source of ecosystem services carried out in the Laboratory for Biogeography of the Institute of Geography, Russian Academy of Sciences. We consider biomes or their integrated parts as units of ecosystem cover. An assessment of the state of the natural frame within each biome is given by a combination of losses in size and phytomass of natural ecosystems. GIS analysis of remote sensing data of the study area is carried out basing the concept of actual biogeography. Field verification is carried out by the method of rapid long-distance observations, which allows collecting data on large territories with an accuracy sufficient for the project. Key natural areas are mapped by summarizing data on specially protected and other natural areas for which their high conservation value is showed. The space between the key areas is considered as connecting areas (“corridors”), from which settlements, mining areas and other transformed landscapes are excluded. GEANT is mapped as an integrated biome complex from Fennoscandia to the Pacific. Several biomes are included in the southern edge of the GEANT in only a small part. We identified biomes the most changed as a result of mining, logging, and fires. Biomes are noted with the most significant spread to the north of woody-shrubby vegetation and a rose up of the upper border of the forest distribution. By contrary, in the south of Primorye the lower border of the primary forest distribution rose up because of frequent fires. The strategic principles of the territorial conservation are formulated for biomes depending on the stage of digression of the natural frame. A basis has established for the quantification of GEANT ecosystem services at the final stage of work.

The article is devoted to the organization of work on S.A. Yesenin’s poem “Sorokoust” in the context of studying the work of S.A. Yesenin’s in the 11th grade. In the introduction to the article, its purpose is outlined, which the author defines as a justification for the choice of methodological tools for understanding and mastering the classical poetic text included in the school literary education program by high school students. A brief digression into the history of the development, justification, and classification of methods of interaction between teachers and students in literature classes confirms the relevance of the problem in terms of the variety of combinations and patterns not only at the level of methods, but also within the method itself, taking into account the introduction of learning technologies and the development of a modern digital educational environment. Based on the analysis of literary and methodological approaches to the study of S.A. Yesenin’s creativity at school, the author shows the effectiveness of combining various methods and their elements in the study of the poet’s biography (teacher’s recitation, lecture elements, students’ reports with the involvement of media sources and media resources) at the stages of reading and analyzing the poem “Sorokoust” (working with sources, comparing the poem with the life’s primary basis, reading a poem with the involvement of various types of commentary, preparing an expressive reading of the poem by students), at the final classes on the topic (questions and tasks of a problematic, research nature, creative tasks, conducting independent educational research, attracting various types of art). Based on the proposed approach, the article actualizes the direction of the work in which the diversity of methods used is determined by the ideological and artistic creativity of the writer, the poet’s worldview, the atmosphere of the era, becomes a way of understanding the poet’s personality and artistic method by the learners, to find new meanings. The article concerns the choice of methods with the most pronounced focus on the emotional effectiveness of a poetic work on high school students, contributing to the development of the artistic taste and improving the reading and general culture.

The article deals with the analysis of morphological aspects of the forest litter structure on ecological and tourist routes in the mountainous region. The study revealed that the changes in the basic parameters of the forest litter are caused by ground trampling. It was estimated that on trails between 0.5 m and 2 m wide, the stock of forest litter is 1.23-1.5 kg/m², and its capacity is 1.3-1.6 cm. With the supply of fresh foliage on the trails, the L, F and H sub-horizons can be identified there. On trails of 2 to 3 m wide, the stock of forest floor is 0.51-0.91 kg·m², that is almost twice less than on narrower trails. The capacity of the litter on trails more than 2 m wide is 0.3-0.5 cm, of which 0.2-0.4 is the F+H sub-horizon. On slopes with ≥ 15 º, the reserves and capacity of the forest litter in the lower part of the trail are about 10 % greater than in its upper part. Basically, the redistribution of forest litter is observed within a trail and its side. The stock of forest litter on the trail decreases due to the fact that the damaged litter is removed outside the trail. In the spring and summer, the forest litter is washed off by rain and melt water, forming the so-called “rollers” on its road (trail). The capacity and reserves of forest litter on the sidewalks are significantly dependent on the width and direction of the trail. The narrower the trail, the larger are the forest litter reserves and on the contary, the wider the trail, the smaller is the forest litter within the sidewalk. The capacity of the forest litter on the side of the trails of the studied routes ranges from 1.3 to 4.8 cm, and its reserves have increased to 1.44-2.26 kg·m². A composition of tree species, tree layer compactness and terrain play an important role in the formation of forest litter as well. The impact of recreation load on the soil cover was also evaluated. It was established that at the initial stages (of I-II categories) of recreation digression, the forest litter becomes compacted and crushed, forming a powerful F+H sub-horizon and covering the trail surface. As the recreation load increases (III stage/category) the stock of litter in spruce-beech-fir forest in the warm season is less than 1 kg/m².

One prominent image of the Christian life in Scripture is that of a journey homeward. Consistent with Scripture and the developmental sciences, Christian spiritual authorities through history have developed various journey paradigms with associated phases or stages and transitions. Constructive paradigms are not linear and rigid in form, but might be represented as upward trending spiral movements that permit digressions, reversions, stopping places and advances on the way. Such paradigms and stages serve valuable heuristic functions in assisting pilgrims to assess where they are on the journey and how to progress in maturity as well as insights for guiding others on their journeys of faith.

Abstract: Varro's approach to his subjects is usually systematic and synchronic, but there are frequent diachronic digressions and observations on time and the past, often divided into three stages (remote past, near past, and present). I discuss Rust. 2.1, with a progressive concept of three successive stages in human history from Dicaearchus, and a fragment from Censorinus, where Varro distinguishes tria discrimina temporum. A significant affinity emerges between etymological research and the study of origins: both involve the study of antiquitas or the origo, and both use the genealogical-reconstructive method. The same image of gradus descendere indicates the sequence of logical and chronological steps in describing human history (Rust. 2.1.3–5) and etymological research (Ling. 5.7–9). Varro is fully aware of the difficulties in reconstructing the ancient past and the origins of language, because uncertainty is a characteristic of the origo of human history and of words.

The space instead of time method was used to determine the species diversity and soil property in different succession stages in Karst rocky desertification area, in China. The species diversity of herb layer was digressive and that of tree layer, shrub layer and the whole community were increased first and then decreased, the peak value appeared in the rattan thorn scrub stage, the lowest appeared in the grass stages. At the beginning of succession, the species diversity of herb layer was higher than that of shrub layer. With the closing time increased, the diversity of the shrub layer increased more than that of herb layer. There had the same change trend in velocity nitrogen, organic matter, total nitrogen and total phosphorus. There was significantly linear positive correlation between the total nitrogen, phosphorus, magnesium, calcium, pH, available phosphorus and the species diversity and richness of the herb layer.

Starting with a description of the motivation underlying the analysis presented in this paper and a brief survey of the chiral anomaly, I proceed to review some basic elements of the theory of the quantum Hall effect in 2D incompressible electron gases in an external magnetic field, (“Hall insulators”). I discuss the origin and role of anomalous chiral edge currents and of anomaly inflow in 2D insulators with explicitly or spontaneously broken time reversal, i.e. in Hall insulators and “Chern insulators”. The topological Chern–Simons action yielding the large-scale response equations for the 2D bulk of such states of matter is displayed. A classification of Hall insulators featuring quasi-particles with abelian braid statistics is sketched. Subsequently, the chiral edge spin currents encountered in some time-reversal invariant 2D topological insulators with spin-orbit interactions and the bulk response equations of such materials are described. A short digression into the theory of 3D topological insulators, including “axionic insulators”, follows next. To conclude, some open problems are described and a problem in cosmology related to axionic insulators is mentioned. As far as the quantum Hall effect and the spin currents in time-reversal invariant 2D topological insulators are concerned, this review is based on extensive work my collaborators and I carried out in the early 1990’s. Dedicated to the memory of Ludvig Dmitrievich Faddeev — a great scientist who will be remembered

Degradation of natural habitats causes rapid extinction of rare plant populations. The diversity of rare plant species in the meadow steppes of Southern Opillya (Western Ukraine) depends strongly on patch area, pasture digression of vegetation and a variety of eco-coenotical conditions. The main threats for the rare components of the meadow steppe flora are reduction of habitat and overgrazing. Spatial connections between sites are unable to support a constant rare plant population. The analysis of the composition of rare plant meadow-steppe species indicated that habitats with similar rare species composition usually have similar parameters of area, stages of pasture digression and eco-coenotical conditions. Spatial connectivity of patches does not ensure species similarity of rare components of the flora. Rare plant species were grouped according to their preferences for habitat , area and condition. In small patches subject to any stage of pasture digression grow populations of Adonis vernalis L., Pulsatilla patens (L.) Mill., P. grandis Wender., Stipa capillata L., S. рennata L., Chamaecytisus blockianus (Pawł.) Klásková etc. On the contrary, populations of other species (Carlina onopordifolia Besser. ex Szafer., Kuecz. et Pawł., Adenophora liliifolia (L.) Ledeb. ex A. DC., Crambe tataria Sebeók, Euphorbia volhynica Besser ex Racib., Stipa tirsa Stev. etc.) prefer large habitats, not changed by pasture digression. Prevention of reduction of rare species diversity requires preservation (also extension) of patch area and regulation of grazing intensity.

The problem of anthropogenic degradation of rivers is usually marked by its multi-sectoral and often international character as well by the large number of sources of environmental threat. Therefore, its solution requires a systematic approach based on transparent and coordinated interagency and international cooperation. The River Dnieper inUkrainehas undergone a remarkable transformation as a result of the construction of a cascade of reservoirs. Anthropogenic damage to the plants and soil that cover its basin have caused damage to the functioning of ecological regimes of theDnieper’s tributaries. Small and medium-sized rivers are dying. In this article, attention is paid to a typical middle-sized (164 km) river of theDnieperBasin, the Tyasmyn. Its middle and lower parts are located in the overtransformed Irdyn-Tyasmyn valley. During the last glaciation it formed the central part of the right arm of the ancientDnieper. Regulation of the Tyasmyn runoff, pollution, the creation of theKremenchugreservoir on theDnieper, grazing and recreational load have led to the threat of the river degrading. Therefore, the aim of this article is to characterize the structure of the herbaceous vegetation in the central and lower parts of the Tyasmyn valley and assess the level of its dependence on anthropogenic changes in the conditions of the ecotypes. The methods used are: retrospective and system analysis, comparative ecology (ecological profile or transect), botanic methods, phytoindication, the mapping method and mathematical statistics. The features of changes in environmental conditions of ecotypes of the river valley have been shown through systematic, biomorphological, ecomorphic structure of the herbaceous cover, the ratio of ecological groups and changes in types of ecological strategy of species, phytodiversity. We found 89 species of vascular plants. The most diverse families were Asteraceae, Poaceae and Lamiaceae. The biomorphological range of phytodiversity of the Tyasmyn valley is characterized by a high proportion of adventive and ruderal species, dominance of vegetative mobile species and disturbed distribution of all spectrum types for coenotic morphs. Depletion of the floristic composition and formation of monodominant groups in the middle of the valley were found. The overall measure of phytodiversity reached its maximum in the areas furthest from the mouth of the valley, lower towards the valley mouth and lowest in the area of pasture and recreational digression. Perennial hemicryptophytes and therophytes dominate the spectrum of life forms. Herbaceous plants without rosettes prevailed in the structure of above ground shoots and placement of leaves, while plants without special adaptations prevail in the structure of underground shoots. In the hydromorph structure with increasing distance from the mouth of the river there is a tendency for the share of hydrophytes, subhydrophytes to fall and, conversely, that of submesophytes to increase. Hygromesophytes and mesophytes prevail almost everywhere. Changes in the acidomorphic and nitromorphic structure of plants were not found. Semieutrophes, hemieurytopic, hemistenotopic plants and types of transitional groups of ecological strategies, including CR-, CS-, and CRS-strategies prevail. Vegetation of middle and lower flow of the river Tyasmyn degrades at stages II–IV of anthropogenic transformation.

Sarah Phelps’s screenplay The Witness for the Prosecution (2016) does more than simply rekindle interest in Agatha Christie’s original short story; rather, it points to its salvation. My understanding of adaptation follows Armelle Blin-Rolland’s model, which refuses to privilege either the source or the adapted text, considering both instead to form part of a textual multiplicity. The relationship between the two resembles, for Blin-Rolland, a vortex. Thus, the meanderings of Phelps’s adapted text cause us to take stock and to read the original itself as loiterature (Chambers) and thus as a text that eschews self-coincidence, that offers more to the idle reader than an efficient delivery of truth. Christie’s text, in other words, if I may myself adapt a term from Walter Benjamin, has an inherent adaptability. Rather than simply conjuring its own adaptation in a virtual future, “The Witness for the Prosecution” contains, in an immediate pre-diegetic past, the original source of itself as adaptation. This source text is not an alternative solution, but runs parallel to the actual reading—appealing, almost subliminally, for readers to produce it; it also runs idly, however, and, unlike its hasty corollary, is content to wait to catch a distracted eye.Before shifting the focus more squarely from the 2016 adaptation to the original text (and its status as auto-adaptation), I should like to draw attention to the format of Phelps’s screenplay. As a mini-series, and thus an adaptation for television rather than a feature film, Phelps’s text presents something of a readerly paradox in and of itself. The series was originally aired by the BBC on two consecutive nights over the 2016 Christmas period (26 and 27 December). Thus, viewers were forced to pause for thought, but not over a week, which has traditionally been the cadence for episodes of television mini-series; instead, the 24-hour pause represented something of an extended intermission. For this reason, it is not clear whether the effect of the pause was to heighten anticipation, and thus to madden readers, or to enable them to take time out to review the case and to ask questions that the reader of the short story may not have time to ask. For, of course, the story is a short one, on the shorter side even by the standards of Christie’s shorter fiction. The mini-series does not present an abridged version, therefore, which is often the case for feature film adaptations; rather, it lengthens the story considerably. The whole experience is drawn out, not condensed. And yet, it is not clear whether this change of pace significantly alters the viewer/reader’s experience.I shall argue here that what it in fact does is to draw out elements of the source text that otherwise pass by unseen. Thus, whether or not the experience that one has of the television mini-series is loiterly per se, it certainly causes the reader who is aware of the short story to reread the latter and, I argue here, to see it as itself an adaptation, and further as an adaptation of itself. Lastly, it is perhaps worth reflecting that, after this initial airing of the mini-series on BBC television, The Witness for the Prosecution became available on DVD and for online streaming. In these formats, the hiatus of the episode break can readily be skipped. The binge-viewer has the ability to view in haste. In addition to erasing, to some degree at least, the difference between a feature film and a television series, such viewing practices recall the perceived generic differences between literature, with its descriptive passages and detours, and crime fiction, with its tendency to be highly plot-, and especially end-, driven. In either case therefore, to apprehend crime fiction in a loiterly fashion is a learned activity, a process that may seem somewhat counterintuitive, but one that Christie’s texts reflexively promote even as they ensnare the reader in the cleverness of their plots.The short story is famous for its twist in the tale: the person who appears the most likely murderer and who is tried for the crime turns out, in fact, to be guilty, much to the surprise of his solicitor, Mr Mayherne. Phelps’s adaptation, for its part, ends with the solicitor, John Mayhew (an alternative surname already used in Christie’s own adaptation for the stage in 1953), walking into the sea off the French coast, determined, or so it would appear, to take his own life, having been informed by his client’s partner that she has known all along that Leonard Vole was guilty. In addition to a new ending, the mini-series also receives a substantial new beginning: Leonard and Romaine receive a back-story; so too, over the course of the mini-series, does Mayhew himself. His determination to save Leonard is set against the death of his own son, who left to fight in the First World War despite being too young for service. Mayhew’s wife, we learn, has never forgiven him for the loss of her son. Saving the innocent Leonard is Mayhew’s way of redeeming himself. When he discovers that he has been duped and that he has saved a guilty man, the only atonement he can see is his own death.While Mayhew’s probity is made ambiguous by Phelps, Leonard and Romaine’s common back-story serves to some degree to explain, if not to justify, their callous behaviour. Phelps’s dramatic first scene shows a soldier drifting almost literally blindly across no-man’s land between the trenches of a First World War battlefield, taking cover from exploding shells and finding refuge in a crater where he finds his future partner Romaine. What is staged here is a looking back to the past, but not in the kind of nostalgic longing for times gone by associated with Christie; instead, Phelps points back to the trauma of war, in the light of which the present is to be survived and negotiated. In her introduction to the edition of the short story republished following the success of the mini-series, Phelps discusses her expectations when being commissioned to adapt Christie’s works, with which she claimed to be familiar without having previously read them. She labels Christie the “epitome of a particular nostalgia-laden Englishness” and mentions, for example, having to step out of the way of people queuing to see The Mousetrap in London’s West End (Christie v). In the light of such comments, it is tempting to see Phelps’s mini-series as a means of circumnavigating popular conceptions of Christie and combating this nostalgia for things past (not only better times, perhaps, but also better detective fiction).A vortical reading of The Witness for the Prosecution as multiplicity, however, in no way works against the original short story; in fact, rather than stepping around it, Phelps’s extended diegetic frame causes us to reflect on the way in which the story itself looks back, making room for, and even conjuring, an unseen pre-diegetic space. Thus, the battleground scene serves a reflexive end, not simply excusing Leonard and Romaine’s subsequent behaviour, but also graphically staging the textual no man’s land of adaptation—the space between the entrenched positions of two authorial powers. The bomb craters suggest both the violence done to the source text and the possibility for a new start and an end to the dominion of previous masters. Not only Leonard and Romaine, but Sarah Phelps, the reader, and even John Mayhew—who steps out of the shadows of Mr Mayherne—all escape the certainties of an era, an empire, and embrace a new future. My argument here is not simply that Christie benefits from the new beginning of another’s adaptation, but that she herself adapted what precedes Mr Mayherne’s first interview with Leonard Vole in her original text.In the story’s final revelation, Romaine opposes Mr Mayherne’s purchase on the truth to her own: he, she states, “thought [Leonard] was innocent”, whereas she “knew – he was guilty!” (29). This is the truth that Phelps’s adaptation appears to mitigate with its staging of extenuating circumstances and casting of Mr Mayherne as the ultimate victim of the story. I do not wish to argue here that Leonard Vole is innocent; rather, what I shall argue is that Romaine and generations of readers have misunderstood the dynamics of the narrative, for the fundamental binary at play is not “thinking versus knowing” but “knowing versus believing”. In this case, therefore, I almost, but not quite, agree with Phelps’s statement that “it’s not the truth that matters […] but performance” (Christie viii). While the text is very much a performance, it is one that serves to “screen” a truth in the Freudian sense, as well as in the cinematic one: the truth that is showcased in the last line of the story also hides another truth, which is, paradoxically, the same one. By revealing the truth in the form of Romaine’s victory, the text hides the fact that Mr Mayherne has known the truth from the very start, and indeed, before that. The story is a performance therefore, but a fetishistic one that points to the truth precisely in order to keep it just out of view. In this way, what Mr Mayhew knows to be true is neither stated explicitly nor entirely repressed; instead, it is disavowed, and what the short story performs is a screen memory.Read vortically, Christie’s and Phelps’s texts both displace the element that separates knowledge from belief, which, as Ellen Lee McCallum notes (xii), is desire. In Phelps’s adaptation, John Mayhew desires to save Leonard Vole in order to redeem his son’s death; in Christie’s text, Mr Mayherne desires to save Leonard in order to save the text. This is salvation as theorised by Shoshana Felman, who famously considered that Henry James’s The Turn of the Screw could only be saved from the critical binary of ghost story versus psychoanalytical tale by having its ambiguity preserved. If Phelps’s adaptation becomes something of a ghost story (it is, at least, a tale of people haunted by the past), Christie’s original text uses a psychoanalytic move to disavow its own psychoanalytical mechanics. Whereas detective fiction is typically end-oriented, with its focus on the ultimate revelation of truth, the psychoanalytic text locates truth in a pre-text. Thus, to save “The Witness for the Prosecution”, the reader must adopt a beginning-oriented lens and establish the original shape of its pre-diegetic revelation. This means loitering (and enacting that paradoxical mix of idle resistance advanced by Chambers) at that very point where the logics of detective fiction are seemingly designed to fast-track the reader’s pursuit of the ultimate solution. For, while reading to discover the ending is still promoted by the crime narrative here, a counter-logics of hesitation and retrospection always accompanies the reader’s progress forwards. If chances to meander down side-alleys are limited, given the brevity of the story, it is this double movement, this walking with a backwards gaze, with half an eye on the present and half on the past, that forces even that reader most pre-disposed to task-focused digestion of the text to slow down and to wander. What is so striking in “The Witness for the Prosecution” is arguably how Christie makes space for wandering in such a restricted narrative, in a creative format that is, of course, all about punch and economy.This space is created as early as the story’s opening sentence. “Mr Mayherne”, it begins, “adjusted his pince-nez and cleared his throat with a little dry-as-dust cough that was wholly typical of him” (1). Whether or not we can be sure that Mr Mayherne’s cough was typical of him before the story begins is uncertain. His habit of adjusting his pince-nez, on the other hand, which is here associated with the cough, is certainly recently acquired. This we learn at the end of the story: “He found himself polishing his pince-nez vigorously, and checked himself. His wife had told him only the night before that he was getting a habit of it” (27). It is my contention that this habit is a response to a traumatic revelation of truth, which requires Mr Mayherne henceforth to adjust his perspective.Habits, as Mr Mayherne’s wife points out, are born of repetition. The story, too, begins with a repeated act. Indeed, the solicitor’s next action is to look at his client, whom the reader is seeing for the first time at this initial point of the text, but whom Mr Mayherne has already seen: “Then he looked again at the man opposite him” (1, my emphasis). At the outset therefore, this habit of adjusting his pince-nez is proleptic, insofar as it will enable him to realise (albeit apparently, but only apparently, too late) that Romaine and the old woman who gives him the letters that condemn her are one and the same, but also analeptic, as it looks back to a previous contemplation of a disguise. The habit that he detects in Romaine is one of clenching and unclenching her right hand. That he sees this without initially being fully conscious of it and then later understands the gesture’s significance is due to his own fetishistic response to the truth of Leonard’s guilt. When he first sees his client, he recognises his guilt, either in his eyes, which then causes him to avert his gaze and look down to his hands, or in his murderer’s hands, which causes him to displace his gaze and to look instead at his own hands, which he occupies by adjusting his pince-nez. Either way, his failure to look at Romaine’s hands and see them immediately for what they are is itself a displacement of his dual state—of knowing his client to be guilty and believing in his innocence “in spite of the multitude of facts arrayed against [him]” (13).Repetition blunts the reader’s awareness of its fundamental role in the story. The weight of evidence against Leonard Vole is repeated again and again. This is one of the key devices, even a cliché, of detective fiction: the most obviously guilty character must be innocent. At its most basic level, this is how “The Witness for the Prosecution” surprises its readers. My suggestion, however, is that this knowledge serves merely to screen the book’s original, or other, meaning, which is that Mr Mayherne knows the truth. It is not truth, but the knowledge of the truth, that the reader is tasked to discover. To this extent, Phelps is right: “it is not the truth that matters, but performance”. And in this case, it is the performance of the truth of Leonard’s guilt in the actualised story that hides the knowledge of the truth that is its pre-text and whose form is not taken by the story while nonetheless being analeptically staged and virtually formed, or (auto-)adapted, as pre-text. In reflexive terms, the highlighting of repeated gestures, and especially Mr Mayherne’s cleaning of his lenses, can usefully be considered signals for the reader to pause for thought. And yet, as reflexive signals, they are both provocative and provocatively hesitant, for however clearly they are displayed, they fail to check the pace and end-orientation of the short story because the reader’s own habit—the compulsion to read in haste, to read for the solution—is not so easily broken.Leonard’s first words in the story are simply, “I know”, which is, in the framework of the present reading, a pure reflection of what the man sitting opposite him is trying to disavow. What Leonard knows is that his situation is grave and that he must be frank. He knows this because, as he says to Mr Mayherne, “You keep telling me so” (1). But it is this response that in fact causes the story to become a tale of repetition. First, there is Mr Mayherne’s conviction: “we shall succeed—we shall succeed” (2). Romaine then repeats her desire when she first meets Mr Mayherne, twice stating the words, “I want to know the worst” (14). Leonard is nonetheless responding to a prior repetition, which, is predicated on the story’s initial “looking again”. In other words, the story itself is a screen memory, a fetish-made-diegesis. The result, in an apparent paradox, is that the desire to hasten the ending, to bring on the final verdict, however terrible, is at the same time a signal for the reader to look back. Again, to look back to that initial second look is to inscribe circles on circles, and to enforce wandering even at this reflexively-staged moment of end-orientation.Certainly, Romaine’s comment, “I want to know”, performs fetishism’s combination of knowledge and desire. And yet, unlike Mr Mayherne’s desire (to save Leonard), which is opposed to his knowledge (that Leonard is guilty), Romaine’s desire appears aligned with knowledge: she does not say that she knows the worst, but that she wants to know it. She has another secret desire, of course, as she reveals to Mr Mayherne in what is a paradoxical display of secrecy. When he asks why she hates her husband so much, she retorts: “Yes, you would like to know. But I shall not tell you. I will keep my secret” (17). Further, she mocks him for honestly believing Leonard to be innocent.Both characters are honest, then: Romaine wants to know that Leonard is guilty (and certainly does not believe him to be innocent) and openly has a secret that she will not divulge; Mr Mayherne, for his part, knows the case against his client is ironclad but also honestly believes him to be innocent. Their stated aims may well be opposed—she wants Leonard to hang; he wants him to go free. Their “true” aims are nonetheless aligned: she knows Leonard is guilty and will sacrifice her own credibility in court to save her husband; he believes Leonard is innocent and will sacrifice her in court to save his client. Both tell the truth in public when performing their official duties (he as solicitor, she as wife). The only difference between them lies in the nature of their other performance: she lies to him by performing the role of an old woman who knows secrets about her past; he knows Leonard to be guilty but partially represses this by taking up his narrative only after he has erected a fetish to protect himself from this traumatic truth (and the reader from the secret past of the text). This disavowal means that he can honestly believe in his client’s innocence while still knowing him to be guilty. Again then, Phelps’s statement—that it is not the truth that matters, but performance—is itself both true and not true. Romaine performs in the story in order for the truth that she knows to be said and then discredited; Mr Mayherne, on the other hand, performs the story in order for his knowledge of the truth to be disavowed, which it to say, repressed within the form that is given to the reader to see, but also available, and able to take form (for the reader prepared to digress) in what lies just beyond the limits of what is said.The conversation in which Romaine repeats her desire to know also ends in a repetition, this time with one of the solicitor’s signature moves: “Mr Mayherne gave his dry little cough and rose” (17). This cough repeats the one that opened the story. In that first instance, it distracted the reader, allowing the adverb “again” to rush through, seen and unseen. In this way, the first cough, accompanied by Mr Mayherne’s cleaning of his lenses, causes the reader to focus their own gaze on him rather than on what he had been looking at. This is a cough designed to open the narrative on Mr Mayherne’s terms. In this second example, it closes down dialogue. This second cough is motivated by precisely the same traumatic revelation of the truth, except that in this repetition it is displaced onto Romaine. With the words, “I shall not tell you. I will keep my secret”, she says to him in the text what Mr Mayherne said to himself in the pre-text. This is a repetition therefore in a story of repetition and of a story of repetition. Repeating what was said before with different words and, at the same time, repeating with the same words what was not said before, the text here presents itself to the reader in the form of an auto-adaptation, a second look at an original text whose form is otherwise virtual.In this way, words unsaid are repressed partially: they are not said in the diegesis (which stands as a screen memory, simultaneously standing in place of the text and tracing in the present the contours of its form as absence) but are said, instead, by proxy, through displacement, in the reflexively staged performance of another text. The disavowal at play here is such that readers find themselves in two spaces at once, on two lines of flight, with the one being opposed to the other. Steps forwards and backwards are taken in equal measure. We are therefore witnesses to “The Witness for the Prosecution”, looking on as the story follows onwards, but this very act of witnessing counteracts this prosecution, adding the idleness of the gaze to the purposefulness of pursuit (of truth). The result is not so much somewhere between a stalled, or false, start, and a race to the end, as both at the same time. In this way, Christie’s story, despite appearances to the contrary, is the very embodiment of wandering.At the origins of both Christie’s story and Phelps’s adaptation is a common truth. It serves as a pre-text for both texts, for both performances. In both cases, this pre-text privileges performance over truth. Each text also has a pre-text, which precedes and predicates the performance. We may consider that Phelps’s adaptation captures the essence (of truth) of Christie’s original. In this way, it values that truth and holds it necessary to its own performance, without being derivative in relation to it. Again, the same holds for Christie’s text, whose pre-text protects its truth beneath its performance: while the performance partially represses this pre-textual truth (with its gaudy staging of its own truth, which we may perhaps this time consider derivative), it also preserves it. For without the performance (of truth), the knowledge at its origin cannot exist. To read “The Witness for the Prosecution” as an adaptation of itself requires a fetishistic eye, and the fetishist is nothing if not a digressive observer. If you’re quick, you can catch the performance; but if you’re content to wander, the audacity of what Christie does not reveal is well worth the wait.ReferencesBlin-Rolland, Armelle. “Adaplastics: Forming the Zazie dans le métro Network.” Modern and Contemporary France (2019): forthcoming.Chambers, Ross. Loiterature. Lincoln and London: University of Nebraska Press, 1999.Christie, Agatha. The Witness for the Prosecution and Other Stories. London: Harper, 2016.Felman, Shoshana. “Turning the Screw of Interpretation.” Yale French Studies. 55–56 (1977): 94–207.McCallum, Ellen Lee. Object Lessons: How to Do Things with Fetishism. New York: SUNY Press, 1992.The Witness for the Prosecution. Dir. Julian Jarrold. BBC One, 2016.