Russian forest sequesters substantially more carbon than previously reported

AbstractSince the collapse of the Soviet Union and transition to a new forest inventory system, Russia has reported almost no change in growing stock (+ 1.8%) and biomass (+ 0.6%). Yet remote sensing products indicate increased vegetation productivity, tree cover and above-ground biomass. Here, we challenge these statistics with a combination of recent National Forest Inventory and remote sensing data to provide an alternative estimate of the growing stock of Russian forests and to assess the relative changes in post-Soviet Russia. Our estimate for the year 2014 is 111 ± 1.3 × 109 m3, or 39% higher than the value in the State Forest Register. Using the last Soviet Union report as a reference, Russian forests have accumulated 1163 × 106 m3 yr-1 of growing stock between 1988–2014, which balances the net forest stock losses in tropical countries. Our estimate of the growing stock of managed forests is 94.2 × 109 m3, which corresponds to sequestration of 354 Tg C yr-1 in live biomass over 1988–2014, or 47% higher than reported in the National Greenhouse Gases Inventory.

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New estimate of growing stock volume and carbon sequestration of Russian forests based on national forest inventory and remote sensing data

10.5194/egusphere-egu21-11217 ◽

2021 ◽

Author(s):

Dmitry Schepaschenko ◽

Elena Moltchanova ◽

Stanislav Fedorov ◽

Victor Karminov ◽

Petr Ontikov ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Remote Sensing ◽

Soviet Union ◽

Forest Inventory ◽

Remote Sensing Data ◽

National Forest Inventory ◽

The State ◽

National Forest ◽

Sensing Data ◽

Growing Stock ◽

Russian Forests

Since the collapse of the Soviet Union and transition to a new forest inventory system, Russia has reported (FAO, 2014) almost no changes in growing stock (+1.8%) and biomass (+0.6%). Yet remote sensing products indicate increased vegetation productivity (Guay et al., 2014), tree cover (Song et al., 2018) and above-ground biomass (Liu et al., 2015). Here, we challenge the official national statistics with a combination of recent National Forest Inventory and remote sensing data products to provide an alternative estimate of the growing stock of Russian forests and assess the relative changes in the post-Soviet era. Our estimate for the year 2014 is 118.29&#177;1.3 109 m3, which is 48% higher than the official value reported for the same year in the State Forest Register. The difference is explained by increased biomass density in forested areas (+39%) and larger forest area estimates (+9%). Using the last Soviet Union report (1988) as a reference, Russian forests have accumulated 1163&#215;106 m3 yr-1 of growing stock between 1988&#8211;2014, which compensates for forest growing stock losses in tropical countries (FAO FRA, 2015). Our estimate of the growing stock of managed forests is 94.2&#160;109&#160;m3, which corresponds to sequestration of 354 Tg C yr-1 in live biomass over 1988&#8211;2014, or 47% higher than reported in the National Greenhouse Gases Inventory (National Inventory Report, 2020).Acknowledgement: The research plots data collection was performed within the framework of the state assignment of the Center for Forest Ecology and Productivity of the Russian Academy of Sciences (no. &#1040;&#1040;&#1040;&#1040;-&#1040;18-118052590019-7), and the ground data pre-processing were financially supported by the Russian Science Foundation (project no. 19-77-30015).

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Monitoring Canada's forests: The National Forest Inventory

The Forestry Chronicle ◽

10.5558/tfc81214-2 ◽

2005 ◽

Vol 81 (2) ◽

pp. 214-221 ◽

Cited By ~ 115

Author(s):

M D Gillis ◽

A Y Omule ◽

T. Brierley

Keyword(s):

Remote Sensing ◽

Sustainable Development ◽

Forest Inventory ◽

Forest Cover ◽

Sustainable Forest Management ◽

Remote Sensing Data ◽

National Forest Inventory ◽

National Forest ◽

Inventory Data ◽

International Reporting

A new national forest inventory is being installed in Canada. For the last 20 years, Canada's forest inventory has been a compilation of inventory data from across the country. Although this method has a number of advantages, it lacks information about the nature and rate of changes to the resource, and does not permit projections or forecasts. To address these limitations a new National Forest Inventory (NFI) was developed to monitor Canada's progress in meeting a commitment towards sustainable forest management, and to satisfy requirements for national and international reporting. The purpose of the new inventory is to "assess and monitor the extent, state and sustainable development of Canada's forests in a timely and accurate manner." The NFI consists of a plot-based system of permanent observational units located on a national grid. A combination of ground plot, photo plot and remote sensing data are used to capture a set of basic attributes that are used to derive indicators of sustainability. To meet the monitoring needs a re-measurement strategy and framework to guide the development of change estimation procedures has been worked out. A plan for implementation has been drafted. The proposed plan is presented and discussed in this paper. Key words: Canada, forest cover, inventory, monitoring, National Forest Inventory, re-measurement, panel

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Recent and future productivity of Russian forests under climate change

10.5194/egusphere-egu2020-10316 ◽

2020 ◽

Author(s):

Anatoly Shvidenko ◽

Dmitry Schepaschenko ◽

Sergey Bartalev ◽

Andrey Krasovskii ◽

Anton Platov

Keyword(s):

Remote Sensing ◽

Forest Inventory ◽

Carbon Budget ◽

Forest Cover ◽

Net Primary Production ◽

Co2 Concentration ◽

Growing Stock ◽

Distributed Modelling ◽

Live Biomass ◽

Russian Forests

Knowledge of dynamics of forest productivity, expressed in terms of Growing Stock Volume (GSV), Net Primary Production (NPP), such derivatives like current increments (net and gross growth), is crucial for understanding the impacts of forest ecosystems on the major global biogeochemical cycles and eventually &#8211; on the Earth climate system. This knowledge is not satisfactory in Russia currently (the country&#8217;s forests cover >20% of the global forest area) because 1) data of official forest inventory are obsolete and substantially biased due to the fact that about 50% of Russian forests were inventoried more than 30 years ago; 2) of the above indicators, Russian forest inventory directly defines only GSV, but by the methods, which have substantial systematic errors of unknown size; 3) remote sensing methods themselves still cannot reliably provide some necessary details, like species composition, age and age structure of stands, below ground live biomass etc. In this presentation, we attempted to provide a systematic reanalysis of the estimates of the above indicators. To this end, a special system was developed to update the data of forest inventory for periods after the latest inventory by forest enterprises (about 1700) based on all available ground-based information and a multi-sensor concept of remote sensing. Hybrid forest cover was presented as an aggregation of 12 satellite products at spatial resolution of 150m. The updating of the main biometric indicators of Russian forests was based on the models of the growth and bioproductivity of modal stands. The results of the actualization have showed substantial overestimation of areas by official inventory and underestimation (up to 20%) of GSV. Comparison of obtained results with an independent assessment of the dynamics of areas and GSV, which was made by the Space Research Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences for the period 2000-2017, showed a high level of compatibility. Using the results of actualization, live biomass was assessed based on a new system of conversion coefficients (Schepaschenko et al. 2018), NPP - on a method described in Shvidenko et al. (2007); and current increments &#8211; using a regionally distributed modelling system on increment dynamics of modal stands. Climate were analyzed for 3 periods: &#8220;historical&#8221; (1948-1975), &#8220;current&#8221;(1975-2017) and &#8220;future&#8221; (using all 4 scenarios RCP (2020-2100)). NPP and increments were estimated for the two last periods using a model, which takes into account selected climatic indicators and fertilization effect of enhanced CO2 concentration. It is shown that use of the obtained results presents substantial possibility for improvement of estimates of the carbon budget of Russian forests, particularly those received by inventory methods, and eliminate the existing discrepancies in estimates of the carbon budget of Russian forests reported in different publications. Projections for future suppose that significant part of Russian forests under &#8220;critical&#8221; scenarios (RCP6.0 and RCP 8.5) have a high probability to reach the tipping point by end of this century.

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Die Baumbedeckung in der Schweiz

Schweizerische Zeitschrift fur Forstwesen ◽

10.3188/szf.2011.0344 ◽

2011 ◽

Vol 162 (9) ◽

pp. 344-349 ◽

Cited By ~ 3

Author(s):

Christian Ginzler ◽

Lukas Mathys ◽

Esther Thürig

Keyword(s):

Forest Inventory ◽

Urban Areas ◽

Sampling Error ◽

A Priori ◽

Remote Sensing Data ◽

National Forest Inventory ◽

Tree Cover ◽

National Forest ◽

Aerial Photo ◽

Small Areas

Tree cover in Switzerland The requirements for national forest inventories have changed in recent decades, as have the issues involved. Initially, the focus was mainly information on timber resources, but today social and environmental functions are also of interest. An a priori separation of the surveyed areas into forest and non-forest during data collection limits the interpretation of the tree resources. Not all trees are located in the forest and not all forests are fully stocked. In the aerial photo interpretation of the 3rd National Forest Inventory, land cover on a regular sampling grid was determined regardless of the land use. This allowed, for the first time, nationwide information on tree resources to be obtained, independent of forest definitions. The tree cover of Switzerland is 27.0% regardless of whether the trees are in the forest or outside. The area covered with forest (proportionally 29.4%) is larger than that covered with trees. The location of the trees outside the forest tends to be mostly either very close to forest or in urban areas. The most densely stocked areas, after forests, are urban areas. The data from aerial photo interpretations of the 3rd National Forest Inventory allow a more nuanced picture of the stocking over the whole country, but the sampling error is still too large to draw conclusions for small areas. The existing and ongoing surveys, however, provide a calibration and reference dataset so that, with remote sensing data and methods, it should be possible to generate more comprehensive spatial datasets to help to fill this gap.

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Combining national forest inventory field plots and remote sensing data for forest databases

Remote Sensing of Environment ◽

10.1016/j.rse.2007.03.032 ◽

2008 ◽

Vol 112 (5) ◽

pp. 1982-1999 ◽

Cited By ~ 166

Author(s):

Erkki Tomppo ◽

Håkan Olsson ◽

Göran Ståhl ◽

Mats Nilsson ◽

Olle Hagner ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Remote Sensing ◽

Forest Inventory ◽

Remote Sensing Data ◽

National Forest Inventory ◽

National Forest ◽

Sensing Data ◽

Field Plots

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Translation and Transformation: English-Language Children's Literature in (Soviet) Russian Guise

International Research in Children s Literature ◽

10.3366/ircl.2015.0145 ◽

2015 ◽

Vol 8 (1) ◽

pp. 1-16 ◽

Cited By ~ 4

Author(s):

Judith Inggs

Keyword(s):

Children's Literature ◽

Soviet Union ◽

English Language ◽

Children’S Literature ◽

Socialist Realism ◽

The Political ◽

Philosophy Of Action ◽

The Soviet Union ◽

Free Translation ◽

Soviet Russia

This article investigates the perceived image of English-language children's literature in Soviet Russia. Framed by Even-Zohar's polysystem theory and Bourdieu's philosophy of action, the discussion takes into account the ideological constraints of the practice of translation and the manipulation of texts. Several factors involved in creating the perceived character of a body of literature are identified, such as the requirements of socialist realism, publishing practices in the Soviet Union, the tradition of free translation and accessibility in the translation of children's literature. This study explores these factors and, with reference to selected examples, illustrates how the political and sociological climate of translation in the Soviet Union influenced the translation practices and the field of translated children's literature, creating a particular image of English-language children's literature in (Soviet) Russia.

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Staging the Great Victory

TDR/The Drama Review ◽

10.1017/s1054204320000118 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 65 (1) ◽

pp. 95-123

Author(s):

Catherine Schuler

Keyword(s):

Soviet Union ◽

Crucial Role ◽

History And Memory ◽

Counter Narratives ◽

The Soviet Union ◽

Great Patriotic War ◽

Soviet Russia ◽

Great Victory

A war of history and memory over the Great Patriotic War (WWII) between the Soviet Union and Germany has been raging in Vladimir Putin’s Russia for almost two decades. Putin’s Kremlin deploys all of the mythmaking machinery at its disposal to correct narratives that demonize the Soviet Union and reflect badly on post-Soviet Russia. Victory Day, celebrated annually on 9 May with parades, concerts, films, theatre, art, and music, plays a crucial role in disseminating the Kremlin’s counter narratives.

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