Zorins, Aleksejs

2011, A Abrahamyan, Teilāns, Artis, Zorins, Aleksejs

Climate change and temperature may lead to long-term irregularities in inter-specific interaction and may alter plant populations' dynamics, its structure and ecosystem functioning in the region [1,3]. Studies on possible effects of climate change on medicinal plants biodiversity and conservation status are particularly significant due to their value within traditional systems of medicine and as economically useful plants. Currently, only limited information on conservation status under the impact of global climate change of these species is available in Armenia [2]. Anthropogenic threats to biodiversity (overpopulation, deforestation and urbanization) have simultaneously hindered research and increased the need for it. From 2006–2009, field studies were conducted to find out changes the growth, phenological and habitat characteristics of Melissa officinalis L., population size and location (GPS mapping). In 2010, we have implicated these research data to carry out future assessment of the risk analyze and impact of global climate change on its population distribution and conservation status. Neural network and genetic algorithms have been identified as stochastic self-learning methods to investigate hidden regularities between different data. Certain factors, such as biological characteristic of plants, habitat of the populations, anthropogenic threats and climate change have been identified as the key elements. In fact, vulnerability of plant population, particularly will increase central and northern part of the country, as they identified to be comparatively stressful environment under global climate change and anthropogenic threats, which included: poor land management, increasing population pressure, and excessive collection of plants.