Across the flat steppes of central Kazakhstan are scattered forests of varying size composed primarily of Scots pine (Pinus sylvestris) and several associated tree species. These forest islands occupy relatively elevated areas, including low mountain ranges and hills formed from the weathering products of granite (and sometimes metamorphic rocks). Associated with these forest oases is an entire complex of boreal floristic elements and rare plant communities that occur far from their principal distribution areas. The forest vegetation of this region performs important climatic amelioration and soil-protection functions. However, the existence of these boreal-type forest ecosystems within the zonal steppe environment raises a number of phytogeographical and ecological questions. For many centuries they have been subject to economic use and various forms of human activity. In recent decades, anthropogenic pressure has intensified considerably. Picturesque landscapes, abundant freshwater lakes, a pleasant climate, air rich in phytoncides, and opportunities for kumis and mud therapy have made the island pine forests of the Kazakh Uplands ideal locations for health resorts, recreational facilities, tourism, and outdoor recreation. All of these factors, together with other forms of human activity, exert a substantial impact on the ecosystem and its vegetation components. They may seriously disrupt established ecological stability and deplete the genetic resources of the flora, leading to a variety of undesirable consequences. The first scientific investigations of the Kazakh Uplands were carried out in 1816 by Ivan Petrovich Shangin, an official of the Altai mining district (Shangin, 1820). He headed an expedition whose objectives included: (1) examination of known mineral deposits; (2) identification of routes leading to them; and (3) natural-history investigations, or, in the terminology of the period, research into the “three kingdoms of nature.” Shangin’s party numbered about 200 people, including seven staff and field-grade officers and seven mining officials. Thanks to his keen eye as a naturalist and broad scientific knowledge, Shangin recorded many interesting observations on the natural environment. Extracts from his report were published by G. Spassky (Shangin, 1820). The report contains information on granite massifs, lakes, forests, and the occurrence of certain plant species. Shangin also recorded a Kazakh legend claiming that oak trees once grew on Mount Imantau, a story regarded as one possible explanation for the mountain’s name. In 1878, Ivan Yakovlevich Slovtsov, principal of the Tyumen Gymnasium and an enthusiastic naturalist, visited Kokchetav District of the former Akmolinsk Province (Slovtsov, 1881). He examined Mount Imantau, Mount Ayrtau, the Zelenda and Sandykta Hills, the Kokshetau Mountains, and the surroundings of Lakes Imantau, Zelenda, Shchuchye, and Greater and Lesser Chebachye. He provided brief descriptions of the vegetation and noted signs of lake shrinkage. For example, he observed that Lake Imantau had once covered an area approximately three times larger than it did at the time of his visit. Of the Borovoye Lake region, Slovtsov wrote: “Within a relatively small area, about twenty versts in diameter, cliffs covered with coniferous forests, reminiscent of the Caucasus and Altai, are wonderfully combined with water landscapes. From any hilltop one may observe endless stretches of steppe, fertile fields producing the finest wheat, mirror-like lakes, and granite cliffs covered with dense northern coniferous forests.” Among the places visited by Slovtsov was Mount Sinyukha. However, he confused plants collected there with materials from other localities and mistakenly reported the presence of several halophytic species, including Senecio jacobaea and Statice caspica. Mikhail Mikhailovich Siyazov (1908) criticized him for this error, remarking that Slovtsov was more of a hunter than a botanist. Nevertheless, Slovtsov submitted plant collections gathered in the Omsk, Petropavlovsk, Kokchetav Highlands, and Karkaraly Mountains regions to E. Trautvetter of the St. Petersburg Botanical Garden, who later published a special paper on them (Trautvetter, 1889). The list included 451 species, dominated by desert, steppe, and saline-soil plants, while representatives of the boreal flora were relatively few. Important contributions to knowledge of the flora and vegetation of the Kokchetav Highlands were made by the distinguished botanist and Kazan University professor Andrei Yakovlevich Gordyagin. He first visited the region in 1896 and shortly afterward published his impressions in the article On the Forests of Kokchetav (Gordyagin, 1897). The following year he conducted more extensive studies, and the results of two field seasons were incorporated into his major work Materials for the Study of the Flora and Vegetation of Western Siberia (Gordyagin, 1900–1901). He returned again in 1901 and 1904, and some of the results were published later (Gordyagin, 1916). As an experienced phytogeographer and traveler, Gordyagin recognized the unique character of the island pine forests of the Kokchetav Highlands and the extraordinary occurrence, far from their principal distribution areas and surrounded by steppe, of a series of characteristic taiga and sphagnum-bog species. Among the boreal plants he listed were Pirola rotundifolia, P. chlorantha, Ramischia secunda, Moneses uniflora, Linnaea borealis, Goodyera repens, Gymnadenia cucullata, and Juniperus communis. He also briefly described forests near Munakty, Lakes Shchuchye and Borovoye, Akmabayev Gorge, and the Mezhedey Mountain area, as well as the peatland at Shchortankul (Lake Shchuchye), where he recorded the presence of Dasiphora fruticosa. Although Gordyagin himself did not climb Mount Sinyukha, specimens brought from its rocky ridges included a poorly developed and deformed example of D. fruticosa. The Omsk amateur botanist Mikhail Mikhailovich Siyazov, after carrying out botanical studies in the Bayanaul and Karkaraly Mountains and publishing brief descriptions (Siyazov 1905, 1906, 1907, 1908; Siyazov & Sedelnikov 1907), undertook a more productive expedition in 1907 along the route Akmolinsk (present-day Astana region) – Kusheke – Munakty – Shchuchye (present-day Shchuchinsk) – Kokshetau, essentially retracing Gordyagin’s path. In two publications (1907, 1908), he described the vegetation of the Kokchetav lake district, especially around Lake Shchuchye, and compiled a list of 260 species, including many previously reported by Gordyagin. Like his predecessor, he did not reach the summit of Mount Sinyukha and relied largely on Gordyagin’s accounts when describing areas containing boreal relict plants. On the eve of the First World War, the Resettlement Administration of the Ministry of Agriculture organized several soil-botanical expeditions to identify fertile lands suitable for resettling peasants from densely populated regions of Russia to Kazakhstan. One of the participating botanists, Sofiya Yefimovna Kucherovskaya (Rozhanets), provided brief descriptions of the vegetation of the Bayanaul and Karkaraly low mountains (Kucherovskaya, 1911, 1914, 1916). 第3部分（共3部分） Beginning in 1912, the Omsk botanist Vasily Fyodorovich Semyonov, a lecturer at the Siberian Institute of Agriculture and Forestry (later the Omsk Agricultural Institute), carried out very detailed floristic investigations in the Kazakh Uplands. His principal study area was the Kokchetav Highlands, especially the Borovoye region (Semyonov, 1914, 1918, 1928). Of particular importance were his studies of bogs and peatlands near Lakes Karasye and Svetloye in the Borovoye forest district (Semyonov, 1926, 1930). His investigations produced substantial information concerning the flora of the former Akmolinsk Province. The botanist Alexandra Mikhailovna Zharkova (1930, 1967), who worked at the Omsk Pedagogical Institute, studied peatlands in the Borovoye forest district, analyzed fossil pollen preserved within them, and notably discovered pollen of oak and alder. She later revisited the area of the former Borovoye Nature Reserve many times and published lists of plant species recorded there. Unfortunately, these lists included only Russian names of taxa and provided no information concerning habitats or distribution patterns (Zharkova, 1976). During the existence of the Borovoye Reserve, Leonid Nikolaevich Sobolev (1937) investigated its vegetation. He distinguished fifteen natural districts within the reserve and briefly described the vegetation of its forests, steppes, solonetz soils, and saline habitats. During the Second World War, Vladimir Nikolaevich Sukachev, together with several other scientists from the Academy of Sciences of the USSR, spent a short period in Borovoye. In late summer and autumn of 1941 he studied the forests of the region and subsequently published two papers on the subject (Sukachev, 1947, 1948). From the mid-1950s through the late 1960s, a number of expeditions organized by the Academy of Sciences of the USSR conducted research in Kazakhstan. These included the Virgin Lands Integrated Expedition (1954–1955), the Biological Integrated Expeditions of the Institutes of Zoology and Botany (1957–1959 and 1961), and the East-West Kazakhstan Expeditions of the Institute of Botany (1964–1966 and 1968). The results culminated in the monograph by E. F. Karamysheva and Ye. I. Rachkovskaya (1973), which included phytogeographical regionalization, a checklist of vascular plants, and a floristic analysis of the region, as well as the Vegetation Map of the Steppe Part of the Kazakh Uplands (1975) and numerous related publications. The botanist Lyudmila Vladimirovna Denisova investigated the pine forests of the Kazakh Uplands in 1959, 1960, and 1963 (Denisova, 1960, 1962, 1971, 1973). She described a sphagnum bog in the Karkaraly low mountains, clarified the distribution of certain plant species, and proposed the protection of several botanically valuable areas. Gulbara Besimbayevna Makulbekova (1966, 1970) conducted geobotanical studies in the Bayanaul forest district. Beginning in the mid-1950s, forestry research in the Kazakh Uplands became increasingly active, carried out mainly by staff of the Kazakh Research Institute of Forestry and Agroforestry (Gribanov, 1957, 1965; Biryukov, 1966, 1968, 1971, 1982; Biryukov & Bobrovnik, 1974; Biryukov et al., 1966, 1971; Tokarev, 1966, 1969; Atkin, 1984). The author of the present work conducted investigations of the flora of the Kazakh Uplands between 1972 and 1985. Research was concentrated in the largest forested regions of the Kokchetav Highlands, including Borovoye, Imantau, Ayrtau, and Sandykta, as well as in the Bayanaul and Karkaraly low mountains. Many of the most interesting sites were visited repeatedly. Field studies involved route surveys, sample plots, and transects designed to investigate patterns of vegetation distribution. Within survey plots, soil profiles were described morphologically; soil samples were collected for mechanical and chemical analyses; forest inventories were conducted; the composition of the shrub, herbaceous, moss, and lichen layers was determined; and projective cover was measured. Floristic investigations recorded the presence of boreal relict species and synanthropic plants. Stages of degradation were distinguished through the comparison of community series belonging to the same original type but subjected to varying degrees of human impact. In assessing degradation, one of the criteria employed was the proportion of synanthropic species within the herb layer. Particular attention was directed toward identifying areas of concentration of boreal relict species, as well as determining their ecological characteristics and habitat requirements. The results of the processing of these materials, together with information drawn from the published literature, form the basis of the present book.