Syntaxonomy of forest vegetation of the central zone of the Lake Baikal eastern coast

The object of this study are the forest ecosystems in the central zone at the eastern coast of Lake Baikal. In total, 98 releves were collected according to the Braun-Blanquet approach. To identify forest vegetation types based on floristic composition a relatively new method, supervised k-means clustering was performed. By comparing the original vegetation data from the studied area with data from the adjacent territories, such as Svyatoy Nos Peninsula and the Barguzinskiy mountain range, the final prodromus of forest vegetation types was obtained. Six associations and two communities are attributed to the class of boreal coniferous forests Vaccinio-Piceetea Br. -Bl. in Br. -Bl. et al. 1939. The forest vegetation demonstrates prominent changes along the altitudinal gradient, which corresponds to the specific humid Baikal type of altitudinal zonation. Higher altitudes are occupied by the sub-belt of the dark coniferous forest belonging to ass. Calamagrostio obtusatae-Abietetum sibiricae Danihelka et al. in Anenkhonov et Chytry 1998. At the medium altitudes mixed coniferous-deciduous forests of ass. Calamagrostio obtusatae-Laricetum sibiricae Chytry et al. in Anenkhonov et Chytr 1998 are represented. Near the shoreline of Lake Baikal, the sub-belt of the siberian pine coniferous forest Maianthemo bifolii-Pinetum sibiricae Danihelka et al. in Anenkhonov et Chytry 1998 occurs. The association Calamagrostio epigei-Pinetum sylvestris Anenkhonov et Chytry 1998 is considered as a post-fire succession community. The supervised k-means clustering method can be highly recommended for phytosociological classification of vegetation due to reliability of the results.