GIS based forest cover change and vulnerability analysis: A case study of the Nandi North forest zone

Abstract. Severe winds are among the main causes of natural disturbances in boreal and temperate forests. Here, we present a new GIS database of stand-replacing windthrows in the forest zone of the European Russia (ER) for the 1986–2017 period. Delineation of windthrows was based on the full archive of Landsat images and two Landsat-derived products on forest cover change, namely the Global Forest Change and the Eastern’ Europe Forest Cover Change datasets. Subsequent verification and analysis of each windthrow was carried out to determine a type of related storm event, its date or date range, and geometrical characteristics. The database contains 102 747 elementary areas of damaged forest that were combined into 700 windthrows caused by 486 convective or non-convective storm events. The database includes stand-replacing windthrows only, which an area > 5 ha and > 25 ha for events caused by tornadoes and other storms, respectively. Additional information contained weather station reports and event description from media sources is also provided. The total area of windthrows amounts to 2966 km2, that is 0.19 % of the forested area of the study region. Convective windstorms contribute 82.5 % to total wind-damaged area, while tornadoes and non-convective windstorms are responsible for 12.9 % and 4.6 % of this area, respectively. Most of windthrows in the ER happen in to summer that is in contrast to Western and Central Europe, where windthrows mainly occur in autumn and winter. The compiled database provides a valuable source of spatial and temporal information on windthrows in the ER and can be successfully used both in forest science and severe storm studies. The database is available at https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.12073278.v3 (Shikhov et al., 2020).

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A satellite-derived database for stand-replacing windthrow events in boreal forests of European Russia in 1986–2017

Earth System Science Data ◽

10.5194/essd-12-3489-2020 ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 12 (4) ◽

pp. 3489-3513

Author(s):

Andrey N. Shikhov ◽

Alexander V. Chernokulsky ◽

Igor O. Azhigov ◽

Anastasia V. Semakina

Keyword(s):

Boreal Forests ◽

Forest Cover ◽

European Russia ◽

Storm Event ◽

Forest Cover Change ◽

Forest Change ◽

Forest Zone ◽

Study Region ◽

Convective Storms ◽

Additional Information

Abstract. Severe winds are among the main causes of disturbances in boreal and temperate forests. Here, we present a new geographic information system (GIS) database of stand-replacing windthrow events in the forest zone of European Russia (ER) for the 1986–2017 period. The delineation of windthrow areas was based on the full Landsat archive and two Landsat-derived products on forest cover change, namely the Global Forest Change and the Eastern Europe's forest cover change datasets. Subsequent verification and analysis of each windthrow was carried out manually to determine the type of related storm event, its date or date range, and geometrical characteristics. The database contains 102 747 elementary areas of damaged forest that were combined into 700 windthrow events caused by 486 convective or non-convective storms. The database includes stand-replacing windthrows only with an area > 0.05 and > 0.25 km2 for the events caused by tornadoes and other storms, respectively. Additional information such as weather station reports and event descriptions from media sources is also provided. The total area of stand-replacing windthrows amounts to 2966 km2, which is 0.19 % of the forested area of the study region. Convective windstorms contribute 82.5 % to the total wind-damaged area, while tornadoes and non-convective windstorms are responsible for 12.9 % and 4.6 % of this area, respectively. Most of the windthrow events in ER happened in summer, which is in contrast to Western and Central Europe, where they mainly occur in autumn and winter. Due to several data and method limitations, the compiled database is spatially and temporally inhomogeneous and hence incomplete. Despite this incompleteness, the presented database provides a valuable source of spatial and temporal information on windthrow in ER and can be used by both science and management. The database is available at https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.12073278.v6 (Shikhov et al., 2020).

Download Full-text