The presented research aimed to assess the contribution of various components, such as biomass and mortmass of the stand, young growth, undergrowth, living ground cover, and forest litter, to the total mass of organic matter used by the plant community. The study commenced in a coniferous-deciduous forest massif located in the Kish River valley, Markhal, Kish Village, Sheki Region, Azerbaijan, with five permanent sample plots allocated measuring 50 m × 50 m. The greatest contribution to the total mass of organic matter of the studied plant communities mostly consisted of perennial parts of the stand (87%) and mortmass of the stand (14%). However, the share of phytomass of deciduous species in the stand ranged from 32% to 98%, which indicates the incompleteness in the process of forest restoration succession. The forest litter contribution was no more than 3%, and the litter reserves were not high (0.18 to 1.21 kg m-2), and the same was not typical for spruce forests, as in fact the litters belong to the destructive type. A higher catalase activity was evident in the mineral horizons of deciduous forest soils compared with the coniferous ones.
Forestry, conıferous-decıduous forest ecosystems, biomass, enzyme activity, litters, organic matter, catalase activity, plant communities
The study explored the ability of forest ecosystems to deposit carbon by biomass and mortmass and the contribution of phytomass of the aboveground and underground vegetation layers, as well as terrestrial detritus. In different plant communities, the study based on invertase and catalase enzymes has proven the importance of assessing biomass in conıferous-decıduous forest ecosystems.