Home – Home – Jornals – Siberian Journal of Forest Science 2025 number 5

The studies were carried out in two types of spruce forests: moist bilberry spruce and bilberry-sphagnum spruce forests. They cover the quantitative characteristics of precipitation in summer period and moisture consumption through transpiration by tree canopy of the studied stands. In moist bilberry spruce forest, trees evaporate about 304 mm of water against an average rainfall of 237 mm. In bilberry-sphagnum spruce forest, the values are 305 and 181 mm, respectively. According to the data of the meteorological station situated close to the area where the research was conducted, the air temperature has increased and precipitation has decreased, compared to the long-term annual average data, since 2003. The average sum of air temperatures for these years is by 3.7 °С above the norm, but precipitation is by 30 mm under the norm, which indicates climate warming in the study area. The soils of green moss spruce forests of the middle taiga subzone are characterized by a favorable moisture regime for plants. The moisture reserves in the root zone of the soil are 60-200 mm, so the trees do not experience a lack of moisture. Due to the fact that transpiration is a physiological process and is regulated not only by external factors, but also by the plant organism itself, it can exceed the amount of precipitation that falls in the form of rain. Water consumption for transpiration in each type of forest also depends on the composition of the forest stand, in particular on the admixture of deciduous species. Thus, the ratio of deciduous and coniferous species in the wet blueberry spruce forest was 97 : 3, in the blueberry-sphagnum spruce forest 99 : 1.