Russian Forest Research and Conservation

russiaglobe

Eurasia and Russia MODIS Satellite Data mosaic for the year 2000-Vegetation appears in green.

The forests of Russia are under pressure. Not the pressures of the old, centrally planned economy where directives as to where to cut and how much to cut resulted in enormous waste, but the pressures of a people trying to find a way to survive in the new economy of today where laws and regulations are weak and where long term planning seems foolish to most.

    The forces at play are enormous. On the southern side of the Amur River is China, 1.32 billion people with a newly surging economy. A nation whose depauperate forests were unable to prevent the massive floods of 1998, which killed 3,000 and cost $20 billion in damages. And to the north is Russia with 23% of the world's forest (FAO, 1995) and home to a population only 10% of China's.  Hope for a brighter future for their children is low and the size of  the population of Russia is in decline and is now a worry even for Russia's President Putin.

logs  

Timber barge on the Yenesi River, Krasnoyarsk Kray, Tom Stone.

  
    How will the forests of Russia be used, maintained, and sustained for future generations?  Is it a question of environmental protection versus development and employment or is that a simplification of a complex problem?  Are these resources truly vital to the continuation of our human civilization, let alone the elevation of millions of Russian citizens out of poverty? How will the forests and other ecosystems of Russia adjust to global warming?

    The Woods Hole Research Center focuses on the understanding, conservation, and management of the world’s forests. It is our responsibility to develop research and knowledge of the world’s largest forested areas in Eurasia and Russia. The Center identifies the critical institutional and political obstacles to natural resource management.

Birch Forest of Kamchatka

Birch Forest of Kamchatka, Gennady Lazerev

We promote and support on-site programs within Russia seen as leading the way towards a more sustainable model of resource use.  Using remote-sensing and GIS technologies we are able to produce maps and model predictions of past and future effects of land-use and climate change on forests, increasing our role as a source of scientific information for NGO's as well as for political institutions.  Management does not have to be distinguished from preservation, and it is our hope that these two concepts can be integrated into a sound plan for the future of these giant ecosystems and ourselves.  Russia not only provides the world a source of wood, climate stability, and biodiversity, but also a sense that true wilderness may still exist. (Nilsson and Shvidenko, 1997).

 

 

Russia Topography

Topographic Map of Russia with major cities and water bodies labeled. Select image for high-resolution version. (JPG - 794KB)