Home – Home – Jornals – Siberian Journal of Forest Science 2021 number 1

Forestry organization is the key task of forest planning that is completed in close connection with forest economy and forest management. Specific problems of sustainable forestry organization and forest use should be solved on this basis. In Russia forest planning development alternated with forestry declining stage and revival. A new declining stage of forest sector, inсluding forest planning, is clearly observable after the Soviet breakup. Forestry is a production industry in which laws of the market economy are in force. A basis of forestry revival would be an objective market ecological and economic valuation of forest resources that will be provided by reemerging forest planning. It is the forest planning that should create the forest economic base of the organization of forestry and forest use. This is an essential tool for forest planning, both strategic and operational. To paraphrase Prof. Mikhail M. Orlov, «forest planning is the guide of forest administration in the case of blindness of the latter». The change of the national forest management system owing to enactment of the Forest Code in 2006 led to significant degradation of the forest planning system, which caused transfer of forest management functions from the federal level to the regional level and a substantial reduction in the volume of forest planning fieldwork. The state owns the major part of the forest fund and it is the state, and not the Russian Federation region, that should provide up-to-date reliable forest information primarily to make grounded managerial decisions and to develop strategic and operative planning documents. The latest efforts of the Federal Forestry Service to revive intensive forestry will end in failure if the forest planning system is not revived on a modern innovative basis. This basis should include the forest economic base of forestry organization and forest use. This is an essential tool for forest planning.

A promising method for finding patterns in experimental data is regression models of mixed effects, which have not found wide application in forest science in Russia to date. Over the past two decades, interest in them has grown significantly in the world scientific community. Mixed-effect models are extensions of regression models for data that is collected by group. In forestry, for example, individual stands, trial plots, geographic regions, etc. can be considered as separate groups influencing the resultant trait. Compared to classical fixed effect models, the addition of a random component avoids violating the assumption of independence in repeated measurements. Therefore, parameter estimates are more reliable. Mixed-effect models are used to solve a wide range of problems in forestry, from describing pairwise relationships between individual tree variables to reflecting the dynamics of forest stands. By giving more accurate forecasts of variables in comparison with traditional models, which include only fixed effects, their introduction into production activities can increase labor productivity and economic efficiency of forestry. A large positive experience of using models of mixed effects abroad should not go unnoticed in the domestic forestry science. Their active use makes it possible to reveal new or hidden patterns in experimental data, thereby giving a new vector in the development of forestry, forest inventory and other forestry scientific disciplines.

The share of forest resources of the Far East accounts for 43 % of the forest area and 33 % of the timber reserves of the Russian Federation. In general, the Far East federal district has the largest forest resources among regions of Russia, while the Far East forests are an important factor in the ecological sustainability of the territory. A significant part of forest complex of the Far East federal district has been developed and transformed. Forests are mainly represented by conifer tree species, the share of clear cuts in the region is relatively small, 45 % of forest fund lands are classified as exploitable, and the allowable cut by regions is developed to 56 %. The dynamics of timber harvesting has a steady downward trend (compared to 2015 in 2019 decrease in volumes is 359.3 thousand m³), care felling is 6 % of the total share of actually harvested marketable timber. The areas of untimely inventory (forest planning) of forest lands exceed 75 %, while the wooded area of the territory is 60.5 % as a whole. The main threat to the preservation of forest fund of the Far East federal district is represented by fires (they tend to grow annually in number and area), clearcutting, which are carried out in most regions in the forests, where they are impractical, and illegal logging (annual damage is estimated at hundreds of millions of rubles, and the share of persons brought to criminal responsibility in relation to the number of initiated criminal cases does not exceed 31 %). Subjects reports on the volumes of reforestation mainly due to natural reforestation, with an insignificant share of agrotechnical maintenance. Article attempts to analyze the data of official statistics (Execution..., 2020), in order to identify the characteristic contemporary trends in the development of the situation in the state of the forest fund of the Far East.

The rise in air temperature that has taken place in recent decades both globally and on the territory of the Russian Federation has an impact on many environmental processes, including the hydrological regime of rivers. According to the data of meteorological stations for 1952-2012, the change in the main climatic indicators in the studied territory of the Central Siberia was estimated. Analysis of meteorological data confirms that over the past decades, there has been a change in the average annual air temperature. Changes of air temperature in the study area are characterized by a stable tendency to warming at a rate of 0.26-0.36 °С/10 years. The average air temperatures for the warm (V-IX) and cold (X-IV) months have a positive tendency to increase. Based on cartographic materials and satellite images, data on dynamic of forest cover were obtained for nine catchments located within three landscape zones - forest-tundra, northern and middle taiga. A regional model of the relationship between river runoff with forest cover of catchments, geographical coordinates and average annual air temperature was development. Numerical experiments with the obtained model showed that an increase in the forest cover of the river catchments in northern latitudes contributes to an increase in the annual runoff, and in southern regions, to its decrease. The results obtained can serve as a theoretical basis for a sustainable forest management in order to obtain the desired hydrological effect.

The successions of the species composition of the dry land forests as well as the climate of the central part of the Sym-Dubches interfluve were reconstructed on the base of the layer-by-layer spore-pollen and radiocarbon analyses of bog sediments in two profiles. The analysis of the species composition of tree pollen and its percentage ratios in the spectrum made it possible to distinguish palynological zones and based on them to reconstruct the main stages (phases) of forest cover in the Middle and Late Holocene. It was established that in the second third of the Atlantic period the pine and birch forests mixed with spruce Picea A. Dietr. were developed on dry lands, and at the end of the period - the pine and birch forests with fir Abies Mill. and spruce were developed. During subboreal period change in the species composition of the tree stands as well as the development of pine-Siberian stone pine-birch and spruce forests took place. In the Subatlantic period the zonal taiga forests with dominance of two species - pine Pinus L. and Siberian pine Pinus sibirica Du Tour - grew on dry lands. Birch, spruce and fir species had a subordinate importance in forest formation. It was established that the regional features of the study area substantially leveled out the paleoclimate parameters what resulted in smoothing out the thermal maxima and minima, which are specific for the Western Siberia. We assumed that the successions of forest ecosystems occurred not only as a result of the Holocene climate fluctuations, but also as a result of their self-development.

Research has been carried out to study the effect of the first thinning on the overall productivity of mature pine stands in the forest-steppe zone of the Krasnoyarsk Kray. The results of the influence of felling from low to very high volume intensity on the value of the current periodic growth in mature pine stands of different initial basal area are presented. In pine forests of forb-green moss and lingonberry-forb-green moss types, a comparative analysis of the average annual periodic increase in the stock for 5-10 years was carried out. It was found that the increase is due to both the intensity of felling and the initial density of stands and varies within wide limits (from 2.4 to 7.3 m³/ha per year). On control plot, this value was 2.6-4.9 m³/ha per year. A positive dependence of the average current annual increment per 1 m³ of stand volume after the first thinning with the felling intensity was revealed. Thinning intensity optimums were determined for stands of different initial density at the age of 100-120 years. For initial densities of 500, 600, 700 and 800 trees/ha, it will be equal to 100 (20 %), 200 (33 %), 300 (43 %) and 400 trees/ha (50 %), respectively, which can be used for practical recommendations for the renewal felling. At the same time, the main criterion for the intensity of thinning of forest stands is their purpose (protective forests) and their condition (natural regeneration and wind sustainability).

Currently, one of the urgent problems of preserving regional flora is the task of identifying invasive species. For this, it is necessary to monitor the distribution of these species and clarify their cultural areas. Landscaping in the South of the Russian Far East makes extensive use of North American woody plants - ash-leaved maple Acer negundo L., desert false indigo Amorpha fruticosa L., false Virginia creeper Parthenocissus inserta (A. Kern.) Fritsch, staghorn sumac Rhus typhina L. Some of them (desert false indigo, black locust Robinia pseudoacacia L.) actively reproduce vegetatively, sometimes creating continuous thickets. This makes it possible to consider them potentially invasive species for the territory of the south of the Far East, although at present they do not intrude into natural coenoses. At the same time, ash-leaved maple, populating disturbed territories, can subsequently grow together with emerging native species (Siberian elm Ulmus pumila L., Manchurian ash Fraxinus mandshurica Rupr., willows Salix spp.), it may be considered as the first stage of its introduction into natural communities. Rarely, it forms monodominant forest stands. Black locust is often intensively vegetatively distributed and, in some cases, is involved in the formation of secondary plant communities. False Virginia creeper and staghorn sumac are found only at the landing sites, but false Virginia creeper can run wild. Ash-leaved maple has the most extensive secondary range (PrimorskyKrai, Khabarovsk Krai), it is somewhat inferior to false Virginia creeper. The remaining species are distributed in Primorsky Krai only. It is important that, together with North American woody plants, in some cases their pests penetrate. Climate change and anthropogenic factors can lead to expansion of the cultural ranges of both North American woody plant species and their pests.

Pozdnyakov’s mountain ash Sorbocotoneaster pozdnjakovii Pojark. is a hybrid genus with a single species that arose from spontaneous hybridization of Cotoneaster melanocarpa Lodd. × rowan Sorbus sibirica Hedl. (Rosaceae), endemic to the flora of Russia. In the Peter the Great Botanical Garden Botanical Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences it is known since 1953, from locus classicus of the natural provenance. The seed reproduction of the second generation was obtained for the first time in 2010. The germination ability was low 4-14 %. In natural conditions the species grows in sharply continental climate. There are cases of the rotting of plants soaking and destruction of plants from Phytophthora in the Saint-Petersburg’s the Peter the Great Botanical Garden at the end of the 1980’s. Under conditions of noticeable climate warming, it is necessary to do uninterrupted phenological observations, monitor the disease resistance, to develop agrotechnical cultivation maps.

The article is devoted to discussing problem of reducing numbers of the dark European honeybee Apis mellifera mellifera L. in the natural and historical habitats. By analyzing changes in forest legislation and administrative policies on the territory of the European part of contemporary Russia, it is established that one of the main causes of the identified problem is lack of housing for migrating bee swarms due to the extremely insufficient number of old-growth trees with suitable for habitat hollows. The aim of the work is to justify the creation of network of specially protected natural area (OOPTs) - of botanical natural monuments and entomological reserves of regional importance as organizational measures for protection, guarding and recovery of the dark European honeybee populations. The key elements of the OOPTs are proposed to make communities of insect and plants that are in protocooperation with each other - trees, in the hollows of which live colonies of dark European honeybee. With the purpose of reducing the probability of breaking the trunk with large hollows, the system of care for trees is presented, which is based on the reduction of the windage for the crown and its stabilization: the reducing tree height, the increase in laciness crown, the formation of a symmetrical crown, installation of tree crowns stabilization and protection system against breakdowns. Creation of OOPTs aimed at conservation and restoration of the Dark European Honeybee populations will contribute to the conservation and increase of biodiversity, the organization of systematic study of the dark European honeybee populations and other pollinating insects, the formation of a network of environmental routes with upbringing, enlightenment, educational and scientific character, the disclosure of the recreational potential of the territory, the employment of the local population by creating additional jobs

Article analyzes the scientific achievements and heritage of Mikhail Antonovich Shemberg, a well-known dendrologist, who made a great contribution to the study of Siberian forests. He carried out a critical taxonomic treatment of birch Betula L . genus, developed new methodological approaches based on population-taxonomic analysis. M. A. Shemberg was the first who studied the variability of different features of birch species growing on the territory of Siberia and the Far East, revealed the patterns of their variability in individuals, populations, different parts of the area. He carried out a diagnostic assessment of these characteristics for the purposes of taxonomy and revealing of the intraspecific structure. The approaches of Mikhail A. Shemberg are widely used by specialists in the study of various generic complexes of woody plants. The pedagogical and public activity of Mikhail A. Shemberg is characterized. A list of major scientific works and list of theses defended under his supervision are given.