ИСТИНА

Phytoindication is a method that uses information about vegetation as an indicator of an environmental variable (e.g., ground water table, salinity, texture, mineralogy etc.). This method has been widely used in soil research, including salinization assessments, due to the close relationship between vegetation and soil properties. Plant indicators of saline soils have been identified in many studies (Bui and Henderson, 2003; Goryaev, 2021; Novikova et al., 2017; Piernik, 2003). The indicative value of plant species and communities in soil salinity assessments is high, although the published data on the confinement of species and communities to quantitative salinity values and their validity as indicators are very scarce, and there are no commonly accepted methodical approaches to the acquisition of such data. In this regard, the purpose of this study was to identify the strength of the relationship between vegetation and the salinity depth and degree in soils of the solonetzic complex and to explore the possible production of quantitative predictions of the soil salinity based on the presence of plant species typical of the Caspian Lowland (Russia).