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INTRODUCTION
The Upper Dnipro Basin is generally reach in water resources. Annual water supply of 1 square kilometer of the area varies from 125 thousand to 200 thousand cubic meters. Human impacts on the streams and lakes of the upper basin include hydro-construction, irrigation, industrial and domestic water use, thermal and acid pollution, ill-considered fishing, violations of the size of water protection areas and regimes of economic activities, increase in the volumes of uncontrolled surface pollutant runoff, etc. As a result, the ecosystems of the majority of small rivers, forming the Dnipro source, have transformed.
The environmental state and water quality of small rivers of the Dnipro basin are affected by the following factors: the increasing runoff of biogenic substances and pollutants from the catchment areas, significant technogenic loads (including numerous quarries of non-metallic building materials and other minerals), irreversible losses of water (land-reclamation, wetland drainage, cultivation of drainage areas and forest reduction), silting of the rivers and inflow of lithogenous material into watercourses as a result of erosion. This eventually results into the diminishing of the quality of water, which forms natural habitat of hydrobionts and is essential resource for human life and economic activities. All of the above upsets the structure and conditions of normal functioning of hydrobiocenosis of the Dnipro River and its tributaries and inevitably causes deterioration of water quality, reduction of biodiversity and stability of streams and lakes.
To protect natural heritage, preserve biological diversity and stabilize environmental conditions within the Russian section of the Dnipro basin, a system of protected areas has been set up. These areas are a national patrimony, which includes the natural objects and systems of environmental, scientific, cultural, aesthetic, or recreational value. Protected areas are set up by governmental decisions. They are completely or partially withdrawn from the economic use; a special protection regime is established there. Current legislation provides for the responsibility for the violation of the special regime of nature resource management within the protected areas.
The priority goal of this project is to justify the establishment of biodiversity and environment monitoring stations on specific protected areas of the Dnipro Basin. The ultimate goal of the project is to establish stations of long-term monitoring to control environmental changes in the natural reserves of the Dnipro Basin on the area extending from the Dnipro headwaters and its major tributaries (the Desna, Sozh, Ostyer, etc.) in Smolensk Oblast to other riparian regions of Russia, Ukraine and Belarus.
