Methodological approaches in assessing economic damage to forests (a case study of the shores of Lake Baikal and the Irkutsk reservoir)
E.L. MAKARENKO
V.B. Sochava Institute of Geography, Siberian Branch, Russian Academy of Sciences, Irkutsk, Russia
Keywords: flooding, abrasion, water erosion, waterlogging, ecosystem functions (services) of the forest, resources of timber and secondary use
Abstract
This paper is concerned with the analysis an assessment of the current state of forest vegetation growing in areas prone to flooding and abrasion on the shores of the Irkutsk reservoir and Lake Baikal (Irkutsk oblast), database generation, mapping and calculation of the areas of these sites as well as the analysis of methods that can be used to assess the economic damage from losses of forest. Geobotanical, cartographic, forest inventory, geoinformation-analytical and other methods were used in this study. It was found that the processes of periodic flooding have a negative impact on the forests of the shores forming, on the site of the original forest phytocenoses, forest stands with a predominance of moss-sedge communities with various types of shrubs. Rare fragments of forest vegetation in the flooded areas occupy less than 1 % of their total area and are represented by low quality, sparse forms of forest stands. It has been established that flooding processes limit the use of land in almost all types of activities. Intense abrasion processes occurring on the shores of the lake and the reservoir, which irreversibly remove land from all types of activity, pose a significant danger. Forested areas on the shores of the Irkutsk reservoir fall into the risk zone to the greatest extent, where their share of the area of abrasion areas located here reaches more than 87 % or almost 42 % of the forested lands in all abrasion areas. An analysis of the current methods showed that the most appropriate for calculating the direct loss of forests as part of economic damage, in particular, its production function, are the rates of payment for a unit of wood and other forest resources. To determine the productivity of forest resources per unit of forested area, regional data and approaches should be used. For a comprehensive assessment of the loss of various functions of forests, regional cadastral valuations of lands of forest resources can also be applied.
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