Modern forest climatopes and forest typological zoning of the southern part of the plain territory of European Russia

The paper considers the current status of forest typology in Russia and methods of forest typological assessment of forest climatopes and forest typological zoning. For the southern part of the plain territory of European Russia at the beginning of the 21^st century, the climates of forest thermotopes, contrastotopes and hygrotopes, their spatial distribution, latitudinal and meridional stretching and zoning were determined by classical forest typological methods. Five zone of forest climatopes (three of them have latitudinal zoning), nine zone of forest hygrotopes and six zone of continentality (zones of forest contrastotopes) have been ascertained. A new, previously undescribed climate of the contrastotop of the mild (seaside) forest climate has been identified, requiring an assessment of the forest-growing effect. It has been established that the modern zones of forest thermo-, contrast- and hygrotopes have a different nature of geographical extent, and the zones of climates of hygrotopes advance the zones of thermotopes, thus forest typological zoning and allocation of forest typological areas are proposed according to three equivalent climatic regimes. The modern forest typological zoning of the southern part of plain territory of European Russia is proposed, it is established that the Krasnodar Krai and the Orenburg Region are characterized by the greatest diversity of forest typological areas. The question is raised about the assessment of the actual existence of some selected local forest typological areas as geographical ecotones.