1 Information Sheet on Ramsar Wetlands (RIS) 1. Date this sheet was completed: August 1,2002 2. Country, region: Republic of Belarus, Grodno Oblast, Shchuchyn District 3. Name of wetland: Kotra 4. Geographical coordinates: 54о00/ N, 24о30/ E 5. Elevation (average and/or maximum and minimum): 123 – 141 m above sea level. Average 127-135 m 6. Area (ha): 10,584 ha 7. Overview The described site occupies the southern part of a bigger wooded wetland territory both in Belarus (the projected Kotra zakaznik) and in Lithuania (Ramsar site of Chapkeliay). The natural associations are dominated by woods occupying 86.6% of the site’s area. The forests are located on thoroughly saturated terrain. The relatively rare for the region hydromorphic black alder and white birch woods constitute 20.9% and 10.1% of the territory respectively. About 5% of the area is under open fen mires and transition bogs. Meadows concentrated mostly in the Kotra floodplain also cover nearly 5%. Thus, over 40% of the site’s area is waterlogged. The Kotra River flows along the northern boundary of the site. The river’s floodplain is heavily inundated, the riverbed is meandering forming numerous bayous, channels and tributaries. The high diversity of the natural conditions is favorable for many rare protected kinds of plants and animals including helobious types. 8. Wetland type: (please circle the applicable codes for wetland types as listed in Annex I) Marine-coastal: A B C D E F G H I J K Zk (a) Inland: L M N O P Q R Sp Ss Tр Ts U Va Vt W Xf Xp YZgZk (b) Human-made: 1 2 3 4 5678 9 Zk (c) Please now rank these wetland types by listing them from the most to the least dominant: Xf, Xp,Tр, Ts, U, M, N, W, 4, 9. 9. Ramsar criteria: (please circle the criteria indices applicable to this site as listed in Annex II; see also point 12 below) 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 Please specify the most significant criterion: 1 2 10. Map of site included? yes 11. Name and address of the compiler of this form M.V. Maximenkov, Institute of Zoology of the National Academy of Sciences of Belarus, 27, Akademicheskaya St., 220072 Minsk, Belarus, phone 375 172 684713, e-mail:[email protected] 12. Justification of the criteria selected under point 9 The site is of international importance because it meets the following criteria: Criterion 1 The site is a particularly good example of a wetland typical of Northwest Belarus and Eastern Baltic region as a whole, and is represented by a single wooded wetland including oversaturated watershed forests, bogs, transition bogs, fen mires, inundated meadows and forests, creek valleys, network of overgrow forest channels. The site is the only virtually unused wooded wetland in Northwest Belarus. It lies across the Belarus-Lithuania border and is the part of a single very important Lithuanian Ramsar wetland – Capkeliu reserve. Criterion 3 The site supports populations of plant and animal species important for maintaining the biological diversity of biogeographic region. The site contains the range of biological diversity (species, habitat types) occurring in north-west region of Belarus. Most important community of site according EEC Habitats Directive: 91D0 bog woodland, 91E0 alluvial forests, 9080 fennoscandian deciduous swamp woods, 3160 natural dystrophic lakes, 3260 water courses of plain to montane levels with the Ranunculion fluitantis and Callitricho- Batrachion vegetation, 6530 fennoscandian wooded meadows, 7140 transition mire, 2330 inland dunes with open Corynephorus and Agrostis grasslands. The Kotra site is the most important area for conservation of biological diversity of northwest region of Belarus. Due to variety of habitats the area supports wide assemblage of rare animal species and sustains significant amount of rare Belarusian Red-Data-Book-listed kinds of birds (12 species), mammals (2), amphibians (1), fish (1), insects (9), and plants (15). 13. General location The site is located in Shchuchyn District of Grodno Oblast around the headwaters of the Kotra River (the Neman river basin) 30 kilometers to the north of Shchuchyn, and it is a transboundary wetland. The site is sometimes historically referred to as the Kotra Pushcha. The Kotra River is the natural northern border of the site with the Lithuanian reserve Capkeliu, to the east it borders on the political frontier of Lithuania, to the south it ends at the rimland of the wooded wetland, and to the west it is limited by quarterly swaths that form the border between the site and the wooded areas drained due to mass peat extraction. The site borders have been identified and duly described. 14. Physical features Geology and geomorphology The upper layer of the area’s landscape belongs to the zone of fluvio-glacial accumulation of lake glaciation and is represented by two genetic types. To the west lies a washout plain with numerous aeolian deposits generally concentrated at the banks of the Kotra River with distinct radial orientation. They are connected with the loftiest sections of landscape. The true altitudes range here within 123 m along the Kotra’s shore line until 127-135 m in the dunes (maximum 141 m). Fragments of a second bottom 50-100 m wide and 1-2 m deep can be observed along the Kotra. The floodplain has two levels. The flat 50 m wide bottom section 3 gradually rises to an upper level characterized by undulating form shaped up by rather small cavities and crests. The width of this particular floodplain section varies from 50 to 80 meters. In the southeast it is adjacent to a section of fluvio-glacial plain characterized by excessive or temporarily excessive moistening. The relief is undulating due to corrugated forms and individual sub-latitudinal sandy knolls. The aria in question is virtually fully waterlogged and covered for the most part by an intricate network of drainage canals. The hypsometric measurements correspond to 127-130 m of true altitude with 2- 3 m - maximum 5 m - of relative elevation. Among the subdominant geomorphologic features there should be mentioned the numerous waterlogged flowing-out hollows of submeridional and marginal course, wind-eroded troughs, small eroded kames integrated into the dune formations, and the small lake troughs with recently accumulated peat. Soil cover The soil cover of the site in question is represented by sod-podsol automorphic, sod-podsol semi- hydromorphic and hydromorphic, cespitose hydromorphic, peat-gley and gleyish floodplain types. Soil layers form on different lithological substrata. Sod-podsol and peat-gley soils of diverse varieties are based on the sandy clay and peaty stratum. The sandstone of the central and more depressed area of the site gives birth to sod-podsol, little or semi-sodded gley and temporarily oversaturated soils with underlying sand. Peat-gley and peat soils of low and medium capacity develop in depressed locations on heavily decayed wood-sedge-grass and wood-sedge-moss peat layers with underlying fluvio-glacial sands or sporadically with underlying clay sand or loamy mass. The wetland soil formation is represented by all types with dominating fen and bog complexes. The capacity of the peat deposit does not exceed 20-30 cm. This is characteristic of this landscape’s transition types. The fen formation complexes are specific of vast flat depressions and river valleys of the Skorbyanka and the Nevishi River. Sod-podsol soils with various podsol capacity, sandy soils based on coherent and loose sands alternating with loose or clay sand, automorphic and contact-gley semihydromorphic soils cover the well-drained mineral islands, dunes and hills of the fluvio- glacial plain. The meadow associations are based on medium-capacity sod-gley soils. The landscape complexes of the potential Ramsar site Kotra are distinguished for their interesting and rare for Belarus biogeocenosis: considerable continental aeolian deposits neighboring on flat waterlogged valleys with sand islands, small river valleys, mosaic vegetation. The sustainable and well-developed natural territorial complexes are based on the ancient lithogenous foundation. Hydrography and hydrology The wooded wetland Kotra is located in the upper reaches of the Kotra River, and it is related to the Skidel- Ivye region of the western part of peat fen-mires belonging to the end-moraine landscape. The initial peat formation in the area dates back to the Mid-Holocene, the time of a warmer and more humid climate when shallow lakes and lowlands with underlying ground waters and water-resisting rocks were subject to intensive overgrowth. The site proper is founded on a section of the fluvio-glacial lowland (southern and central parts), the Kotra and Skorbyanka floodplains, ravines, wind-eroded troughs, cavities, and furrows. The area is dominated by bogs and fen mires. The bogs are concentrated in the central part of the site. They are covered mainly by pine or white birch forests and pine undergrowth. Black alder forests tend to grow on fen mires, white birch associations – on transition bogs. The open fen mires and transition bogs are located predominantly in river floodplains and are represented chiefly by sedge associations. Of special interest is Lake Goloye Boloto, which is overgrown and transition-type waterlogged, whose central section is treeless with water-covered pits and open waters surrounded by white-birch-moss-sedge associations. The bog is fed chiefly on rainfall, but ground waters also play an important role here. The surface run-off of the wooded wetland is shed both in the western and northern directions. 4 The principal draining watercourse is the Kotra River. It flows along the Lithuanian border and thus blocks the potential Ramsar site in the north. The river is 122 km long from the springhead to the estuary, and 35 km within the boundaries of the site.