Why are there no huge trees in Russia? Age of forests in Russia
In the vast expanses of Russia - from St. Petersburg to Vladivostok - in a country where 1/5 of the planet's forests grow - equally young forests grow. You won't find trees older than 150-200 years. Why?
Let's look at the data on the possible age of trees: Norway spruce - capable of growing and living from 300 to 500 years. Scots pine is from 300 to 600 years old. Linden small-leaved from 300 to 600 years. Beech is from 400 to 500 years old. Cedar pine 400 to 1000 years. Larch up to 500 years old. Siberian larch (Larix sibirica) up to 900 years. Common juniper (Juniperus communis) up to 1000 years. Yew berry (Taxus baccata) up to 2000 years. English oak, up to 40 meters high, up to 1500 years old.
The photo shows a tree growing in California. The diameter of the trunk near the ground reaches 27 meters. The age is estimated at 2 thousand years. Well, even if it’s less, the age of this tree is still more than 500 years for sure. This means that everything was fine in California for the next 500 - 2000 years :))
What happened to the nature of Russia 200 years ago? The phenomenon that “reset” the forests of Russia... The following versions come to mind: 1. Forest fire. 2. Mass clearing. 3. Another cataclysm.
Let's look at each version.
1. A version of a powerful fire 200 years ago.
The forest area of Russia today is 809 million hectares. http://geographyofrussia.com/les-rossii/ Annual fires, even very strong ones, burn up to 2 million hectares. What is less than 1% forest area. It is generally accepted - human factor, that is, the presence of a person in the forest who lit a fire. It’s just that the forest doesn’t burn.
Closest to us in time forest fires- this is the period of the summer of 2010, when all of Moscow was in smoke. What kind of fires were these and what territory did they cover?
"At the end of July, August and beginning of September 2010 in Russia, throughout the entire territory of first the Central Federal District, and then in other regions of Russia, a difficult fire situation arose due to ABNORMAL HEAT and lack of precipitation. PEAT fires in the Moscow region were accompanied by a burning smell and heavy smoke in Moscow and in many other cities. As of the beginning of August 2010, fires covered about 200 thousand hectares in 20 regions (Central Russia and the Volga region, Dagestan) They write to us in a large and detailed article on Wikipedia.
Peat fires were recorded in the Moscow region, Sverdlovsk, Kirov, Tver, Kaluga and Pskov regions. The most severe fires were in the Ryazan and Nizhny Novgorod regions and Mordovia, where a real disaster actually occurred. A real disaster from just 200 thousand hectares of burning forest! Burning peat.
About peat.
In the 1920s, as part of the GOELRO plan, swamps in Central Russia were drained in order to extract peat, due to its greater availability and need as a fuel - compared to oil, gas and coal. In the 1970-1980s, peat was extracted for the needs of agriculture. The burning of dehydrated peatlands in the 2000s is the consequences of peat mining in the early 1920s. 200 years ago there seemed to be no peat mining. That is, the forest had even less reason to burn.
Heat abnormality of 2010.
The 2010 heat wave in Russia is a long period of abnormally hot weather in Russia in last decade June - first half of August 2010. It became one of the causes of massive fires, accompanied by unprecedented smog in a number of cities and regions. Led to economic and environmental damage. In its scope, duration and degree of consequences, the heat had no analogues in more than a century of weather observation history. The head of Roshydromet, Alexander Frolov, tells us a fairy tale that “based on data from lake sediments, such a hot summer in Russia has not happened since the time of Rurik, that is, in the last more than 1000 years!... "
Thus, government services say that this heat was extremely rare.
This means that the consequences of burning 200 thousand hectares in Central Russia are an exceptional rarity. There is some reasonableness in this statement, since a fire in which at least a third of the forests of central Russia burned would have caused such smoke, such carbon monoxide poisoning, such economic losses - in the form of thousands of burned villages, such human losses - that this would certainly have been reflected in history. By at least it is reasonable to assume.
So, fire as a phenomenon is, of course, possible.
But it needs to be specially organized for large territory, and the territory of Russia is very, very huge. Which implies enormous costs. And these arsonists must be able to withstand the rain - since rain in Russia in the summer is also an everyday reality. And a few hours of pouring rain will nullify all the efforts of the arsonists.
2.Mass cutting version.
On an area of 800 million hectares - even with modern technology - benosipil is a very long and difficult undertaking. Now all loggers in Russia cut down about 2 million hectares of forest per year. equipment is used to remove timber, ships to float it down rivers, cars and barges for transportation.
200 years ago, even if there were enough loggers to cut down 1/100 of the country’s forests, on an area of 8 million hectares (8 million loggers), who and how would be able to remove such volumes of forest and where to sell it. It is clear that it is not realistic to transport and use such volumes of timber using manual labor and horses.
3.A version of another cataclysm that could destroy all forests. What could it be?
Earthquake? So we don’t see them.
Flood? Where can I get enough water to flood? a whole continent? And the mighty trees would still remain standing. Or at least lie down. But such a flood would wash away all the people.
In general, other disasters are not suitable. And even if they were suitable, their power of influence would have to be reflected in the history of the country.
Conclusion. There is a fact of absence of mature forest. We have forests everywhere - young thickets. An explanation for this phenomenon remains to be found.
Why are all the trees very young in Russia and in Siberia? middle age trees are only 150 years old; in America there are huge sequoias that are 2000 years old or more. Why such a huge difference? And why do we have coal in Russia and not in America?
Stone forest
Pine lives for 400 years and individual specimens in Siberia reach a little more and die; pines rarely survive longer, because now the conditions in Siberia are very harsh. But in Kemerovo coal is mined in mines. Where did this Coal come from, which warms us, if not from compressed ancient huge trees, which for some reason mysteriously disappeared from us?
How was coal formed? Not a single academician will answer this question, let alone the Internet. Coal was formed by just a 5-7 meter layer of old tree species, compressed and turned into coal - compressed wood. Some kind of plate fell from above and compressed it, heating them up at the same time. What force lifted hundreds of tons of rocks into the air and covered these trees from above, if you have to go down quite deep into the mine? What is the cause of the creation of coal? Where have all our redwood trees gone, like in America? They obviously were! Apparently, coal was compressed from these redwood trees. But America has no coal, because there was more favorable climate and all the Sequoias survived.
Maybe it's because of the Tunguska meteorite? The Tunguska meteorite fell on June 30, 1908 in the area of the Podkamennaya Tunguska River, an event called the “Tunguska phenomenon” occurred at 4 o’clock in the morning. But, if the Tunguska meteorite exploded while passing over Europe, then its explosion would be capable of completely destroying a city like St. Petersburg. Thank God that this did not happen, but something happened, because there are no forests in St. Petersburg - young trees are everywhere and the oldest trees were clearly planted deliberately near the Peter and Paul Fortress - 300-year-old oak and linden remained there
and Oranienbaum there are ancient trees left, but all the trees around are relatively young. It’s not for nothing that they say that there was some unthinkable cataclysm in Nature in 1812-1814 and Napoleon lost to the Russians because he froze in Russia.
The tree ring method is extremely poor at reflecting the effects of all major volcanic eruptions - the eruption of a tropical volcano in what is now Mexico or Ecuador in 1258, the underwater volcano Kuwae in the vicinity of the Pacific islands of Vanuatu in 1458, the mysterious 1809 eruption and explosion of the Tambora volcano on the Indonesian island of Sumbawa. in 1815.
What kind of cold snap was there then? In 1812, when Napoleon went to Russia, he was stopped by the Russian Frost, and Hitler was also stopped by the Russian frost. Santa Claus is the bodyguard of the Russians. But I have a question: Where does this frost come from at the right time, at in the right place and where did it come from permafrost in Siberia, when it used to be warm in Russia, is Russia the Homeland of elephants?
Everyone remembers Palms in Astrakhan Streis, Jan Jansen:
17th century engraving from a book by Jan Streis. The atrocities of Stepan Razin's Cossacks in captured Astrakhan.
In St. Petersburg, orange trees grew in Oranienbaum Lomonosov near St. Petersburg - this is the Orange City - On all the ancient engravings of the city there are rows of orange trees, moreover, right in the ground, and not in a greenhouse.
Oranienbaum. Engraving by A.I. Rostovtsev, 1716.
Oranienbaum. Engraving by A.I. Rostovtsev, 1716. Sailboats came straight to the palace, which already stood in 1716. Oraniybaum where in open ground oranges grew earlier. #Peter #Lomonosov
Engraving. Grand Palace Oranienbaum. Mid-18th century.
Engraving. Grand Palace Oranienbaum. Mid-18th century.
Trees react very sensitively to the slightest changes in climatic conditions - increase or decrease in temperature, energy solar radiation and other factors. All these events are reflected in the shape and thickness of annual rings - layers of wood in the trunk, which are formed during the growing season. It is believed that dark rings correspond to unfavorable conditions environment, and light ones are favorable. and now, when trees are cut down, the entire core is completely dark - these were not favorable years for tree growth.
Michael Mann from Pennsylvania State University in State College (USA) and his colleagues tested how accurately tree rings reflect the short-term drop in temperature that occurs after severe tropical volcanic eruptions.
To do this, Mann and his colleagues compared graphs of seasonal temperature fluctuations from 1200 to the present day, which were obtained using a “conventional” climate model and a technique that included analysis of tree rings. The traditional model tracks changes in the intensity of solar radiation and fluctuations in the planet's energy balance, which are reflected in increases or decreases in average temperatures.
The second method used as initial data sections of trunks obtained in 60 high-mountain forest areas on the so-called “treeline” - the maximum height at which ordinary trees can grow. Local climatic conditions only minimally satisfy needs woody vegetation, and abnormally high or low average annual temperatures reflected well in the rings.
Because of this, chronological errors can accumulate in sections as one moves from relatively modern rings to more ancient ones."
And you know. What I think is that it’s easy in Russia because of the anomalous low temperatures our forest simply has not grown. And the dark cores of the trees are proof of this - the Ice Age influenced our trees.
The truth is out there somewhere.
Forests are one of the most valuable resources of our vast Motherland. Forest occupies about 45% of the territory and accounts for about 24% of the entire planet's reserves. The most common forests in Russia are coniferous trees, such as larch, pine, spruce and cedar. But in the European part, deciduous and mixed ones are still more common.
It is known that many trees live several times longer than a person, but few people think that there are plants that took root long before the creation of the Egyptian pyramids and survived the rise and fall of more than one human civilization.
It has been precisely established that on our planet there are about 50 trees whose age exceeds 1000 years. In reality, there are much more such plants, since many of them are located in inaccessible areas, and it is not possible to carry out their examination.
The oldest tree on the planet is the bristlecone pine, growing in California. national forest Inio. The tree is about 5000 years old. To protect him, information about his exact location is not disclosed.
One of oldest trees Our country has the Grunwald oak, growing in the Kaliningrad region, the tree is more than 800 years old. Among the two dozen oldest trees in Russia, there is an oak in Chuvashia aged 480 years, a 400-year-old oak on the Don and a 700-year-old plane tree in Dagestan. In addition, in Yakutia, scientists discovered an entire area of Cajander larches (Larix cajanderi), among which more than a dozen trees are aged from 750 to 885 years.
However, the latest methods of dating the age of trees suggest that the longest-lived of all trees on Earth are TISS s.
Yews are relics that reached their maximum development in the Tertiary period; now they are extremely rare and scattered. The genus yew belongs to the yew family and includes 8 species growing mainly in the Northern Hemisphere: Europe, Asia, North America.
In Russia, yew is represented by two types: berry yew (also known as common or European - Taxus baccata) - grows in the Caucasus, Kaliningrad region. both in the Crimea, and yew spiky - grows in the Khabarovsk and Primorsky territories.
In the Khosta area near Sochi on the Black Sea coast of the Caucasus, there is a yew-boxwood grove in which 600-1000-year-old yews grow.
Abroad, the age of the oldest yew in Scotland in Fortingall is estimated at nine thousand years. In England, in the county of Kent, there grows a yew tree with a diameter of 490 cm. When the pyramids were built in Egypt, this yew was already a quite decent mature tree.
One of the oldest yews in Central Europe It is considered to be a tree growing near the Czech city of Havlicuv Bord, its height is up to 25 meters, and its age is more than 2000 years.
Perhaps the tallest and oldest yew in the Caucasus currently growing is the Adjarian yew in Georgia. Its height is 32.5 meters, its trunk diameter is 2.5 meters, its age is about 4000 years.
It can be difficult to accurately determine the age of yew trees. After four hundred to five hundred years of life, the trunk becomes hollow, and calculate the life time according to tree rings impossible. The main parameters in such cases, which make it possible to estimate the lifespan of trees, are their height and trunk diameter.
In the mountains of Crimea, yews usually do not rise above a thousand meters above sea level (the tree does not like frost). Prefers soils that are fresh, nutritious, rich in lime - dolomites, limestones, marls.
Knowing the barbaric nature of some bipeds, yews climb into deserted places and reluctantly allow erectus to approach them. These relics can be found in secluded places on the southern steep slopes of the Main Ridge under the canopy of beech and hornbeam forests.
The first time we found two relict tree quite by accident, having lost the path in the mountains near Sevastopol.
Every time we returned to this place again and again, a new more ancient giant. It was as if the trees were making sure that we did not want to harm them.
On the 5th or 6th time of our visit, a real ancient beauty was revealed to us. Height - 18-19 m, diameter - 104 cm (circumference - 3 m 25 cm), which means that The relic is about 2000 years old!
The tree is not hollow, healthy and strong. It seemed to us that this was the limit!
And imagine our surprise when the next time the patriarch of this grove revealed himself to us. Judging by its height - 24-25 meters and trunk diameter - 130 cm (circumference 4m 07cm) this tree is 2500-3000 (two and a half - three thousand) years old!
This is the oldest tree in Russia! Its age is 2500-3000 years
LINK
To see a 3D 360° panorama, click on the LINK
Yew (Yew) - Tree of Resurrection, Tree of Eternity. From the book “Celtic Wisdom of Trees.” Jane Gifford ©.
Tiss guards the gate between this life and the future life, and also protects people from the evil spirits of the heavenly world. Since ancient times, the yew, as the sacred Tree of Immortality, has been associated with burial sites, where it protects and purifies the dead. In Brittany they believe that cemetery yews are connected by their roots to the mouth of each of the bodies resting around them. The ancient custom of placing yew branches under the shroud of the deceased was considered a means of protecting the immortal soul of the deceased on the way to the Underworld. In ancient Greece and Rome, the yew was dedicated to Hecate, whose cult spread all the way to Scotland. Potion gurgling in famous cauldron witches from Shakespeare's Macbeth, contains yew shoots "gathered during a lunar eclipse." Hamlet's uncle, in order to kill the king, pours poisonous, “twice-deadly yew” into his ear.
The Irish Ollavs revered the yew more than any other tree. The yew, like the tree of life and death, was called “The Glory of Banba.” The ancient Celts gave yew other names. The name “Spell of Knowledge” speaks for itself, and the name “ Royal ring"is said to be related to a brooch that symbolized the changing cycles of existence. The brooch was worn by the rulers of the Celts to constantly remind them of the inevitability of death and subsequent rebirth. The yew was a symbol of the changing of these cycles.
The Druids believed that yew was able to overcome the boundaries of time. In the rituals of the Druids, the yew personified high degree priesthood called Ovate. To be initiated into Ovate, the aspirant had to go through a symbolic death in order to be reborn with new knowledge that has no boundaries and is beyond time. Thus, the yew became a means of direct communication with the ancestors and the kingdom of the spirit, where angels and intercessors live who can help each of us
The mystical aura surrounding the yew further strengthened faith in him. magical power. And the formation of prejudices was helped by the inherent fear of death in all people and the use of yew as a weapon and deadly poison.
In many legends, yew appears as a symbol of unhappy love, when lovers are united only by death (the legend of Tristan and Isolde).
Like a tree, whose lifespan not only exceeds the lifespan of other trees, but also overlaps most of history of people, yew serves as a symbol of the highest wisdom.
For christian church The yew became the tree of resurrection - a symbol of Jesus Christ rising from the tomb after the crucifixion.
Thiess talks about brevity human life and that most of our affairs are short-lived and eventually turn out to be untenable. And the last, general lesson of yew and the pinnacle of our spiritual path is the understanding that death is more significant than all other events of our existence.
P.S.
Warning: All parts of yew are extremely poisonous!
Yew secretes a deadly poison that was coated on arrowheads, making the arrows doubly lethal. The poison is absorbed literally in minutes. In small doses, it slows the heartbeat, can cause collapse and cause gastroenteritis. Even in small doses, the poison can lead to sudden death. The poison is distributed evenly throughout the plant, and the older the needles, the more poisonous they are.
P.P.S.
Wild yew berry is protected throughout the world. As an ancient relic and a unique natural monument, it deserves the most careful protection and breeding; the plant is listed in the Red Book of Russia, its damage is strictly prohibited.
How did Tartary die? Part 3a. "Relict" forests. September 28th, 2014
One of the arguments against the fact that a large-scale catastrophe could have happened 200 years ago is the myth about “relict” forests that supposedly grow in the Urals and Western Siberia.
I first came across the idea that there was something wrong with our “relict” forests ten years ago, when I accidentally discovered that in the “relict” city forest, firstly, there were no old trees older than 150 years. , and secondly, there is a very thin fertile layer there, about 20-30 cm. This was strange, because while reading various articles on ecology and forestry, I repeatedly came across information that over a thousand years a fertile layer of about one meter is formed in the forest, then yes, a millimeter per year. A little later it turned out that a similar picture is observed not only in the central city forest, but also in other pine forests located in Chelyabinsk and its environs. There are no old trees, the fertile layer is thin.
When I started asking local experts about this topic, they began to explain to me something about the fact that before the revolution, pine forests were cut down and replanted, and the rate of accumulation of the fertile layer in pine forests should be calculated differently, that I don’t understand anything about this and It's better not to go there. At that moment, this explanation, in general, suited me.
In addition, it turned out that it is necessary to distinguish between the concept of “relict forest”, when we are talking about forests that have been growing in a given area for a very long time, and the concept of “relict plants”, that is, those that have been preserved since ancient times only in this place. The last term does not mean at all that the plants themselves and the forests in which they grow are old, and accordingly the presence large quantity relict plants in the forests of the Urals and Siberia does not prove that the forests themselves have been growing in this place unchanged for thousands of years.
When I began to understand the “Tape Burs” and collect information about them, I came across next message at one of the regional Altai forums:
“One question haunts me... Why is our ribbon forest called relict? What's relict about it? They write that it owes its existence to a glacier. The glacier disappeared thousands of years ago (according to the tortured people). Pine lives 400 years and grows up to 40 meters in the air. If the glacier disappeared so long ago, then where was the ribbon forest all this time? Why are there practically no old trees in it? And where are the dead trees? Why is there only a few centimeters of soil there and then sand? Even in three hundred years, the cones/needles should have given a larger layer... In general, it seems that the ribbon forest is a little older than Barnaul (if not younger) and the glacier, thanks to which it arose, disappeared not 10,000 years ago, but much closer to time for us... Maybe I don’t understand something?..."
http://forums.drom.ru/altai/t1151485069.html
This message is dated November 15, 2010, that is, at that time there were no videos by Alexei Kungurov or any other materials on this topic. It turns out that, regardless of me, another person had exactly the same questions that I once had.
Upon further study of this topic, it turned out that a similar picture, that is, the absence of old trees and a very thin fertile layer, is observed in almost all forests of the Urals and Siberia. One day I accidentally talked about this topic with a representative of one of the companies that processed data for our forestry department throughout the country. He began to argue with me and prove that I was wrong, that this could not happen, and immediately in front of me he called the person who was responsible for statistical processing. And the man confirmed it that maximum age the trees that were counted in this work were 150 years old. True, the version they issued stated that in the Urals and Siberia, coniferous trees generally do not live more than 150 years, so they are not taken into account.
We open the directory on the age of trees http://www.sci.aha.ru/ALL/e13.htm and see that Scots pine lives 300-400 years, especially favorable conditions up to 600 years, Siberian pine 400-500 years, Norway spruce 300-400 (500) years, prickly spruce 400-600 years, and Siberian larch 500 years normal conditions, and up to 900 years in especially favorable ones!
It turns out that everywhere these trees live for at least 300 years, and in Siberia and the Urals no more than 150?
You can see what relict forests should really look like here: http://www.kulturologia.ru/blogs/191012/17266/ These are photographs from the cutting down of sequoias in Canada at the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th centuries, the thickness of the trunks of which reaches up to 6 meters, and age up to 1500 years. Well, it’s Canada, but here, they say, redwoods don’t grow. None of the “specialists” could really explain why they don’t grow if the climate is almost the same.
Now yes, now they are not growing. But it turns out that similar trees grew here too. Guys from our Chelyabinsk state university who participated in excavations in the area of Arkaim and the “country of cities” in the south Chelyabinsk region, they said that where the steppe is now, in the time of Arkaim there were coniferous forests, and in some places there were giant trees, the diameter of whose trunks was up to 4 - 6 meters! That is, they were comparable to those we see in the photo from Canada. The version of where these forests went says that the forests were barbarously cut down by the inhabitants of Arkaim and other settlements they created, and it is even suggested that it was the depletion of the forests that caused the migration of the Arkaim people. Like, the whole forest here has been cut down, let’s go cut it down somewhere else. The Arkaimites apparently did not yet know that forests could be planted and regrown, as they had done everywhere since at least the 18th century. Why in 5500 years (the age Arkaim is now dated to be) the forest in this place did not recover on its own, there is no clear answer. He didn’t grow up, well, he didn’t grow up. It happened that way.
Here is a series of photographs I took in local history museum in Yaroslavl this summer, when I was on vacation with my family.
In the first two photos, I cut down pine trees at the age of 250 years. The trunk diameter is more than a meter. Directly above it are two pyramids, which are made from cuts of pine trunks aged 100 years, the right one grew freely, the left one grew in a mixed forest. In the forests in which I have been, mostly similar 100-year-old trees or a little thicker are observed.
They are shown larger in these photos. At the same time, the difference between a pine tree that grew in the wild and in an ordinary forest is not very significant, and the difference between a pine tree that is 250 years old and 100 years old is just about 2.5-3 times. This means that the diameter of a pine trunk at the age of 500 years will be about 3 meters, and at the age of 600 years it will be about 4 meters. That is, found during excavations giant tree stumps could even remain from an ordinary pine tree about 600 years old.
In the last photo there are cuts of pine trees that grew in the remote spruce forest and in the swamp. But what especially struck me in this display case was the cut of a pine tree at the age of 19 years, which is at the top right. Apparently this tree grew in freedom, but still the thickness of the trunk is simply gigantic! Now trees do not grow at such a speed, even in the wild, even with artificial cultivation with care and feeding, which once again indicates that very strange things are happening to the climate on our Planet.
From the above photographs it follows that the pine trees are at least 250 years old, and taking into account the production of saw cuts in the 50s of the 20th century, those born 300 years from today, in the European part of Russia take place, or at least met there 50 years ago. During my life, I have walked through forests for hundreds of kilometers, both in the Urals and in Siberia. But exactly the same big pine trees like in the first photo, with a trunk more than a meter thick, I haven’t seen it anywhere! Neither in forests, nor in open spaces, nor in inhabited places, nor in hard-to-reach areas. Naturally, my personal observations are not yet an indicator, but this is confirmed by the observations of many other people. If anyone reading can give examples of long-living trees in the Urals or Siberia, then you are welcome to provide photographs indicating the place and time when they were taken.
If we look at the available photographs of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, we will see very young forests in Siberia. Here are photographs known to many from the site of the fall of the Tunguska meteorite, which were repeatedly published in various publications and articles on the Internet.
All the photographs clearly show that the forest is quite young, no more than 100 years old. Let me remind you that the Tunguska meteorite fell on June 30, 1908. That is, if the previous large-scale disaster that destroyed forests in Siberia occurred in 1815, then by 1908 the forest should look exactly like in the photographs. Let me remind skeptics that this territory is still practically uninhabited, and at the beginning of the 20th century there were practically no people there. This means that there was simply no one to cut down the forest for economic or other needs.
Another interesting link to the article http://sibved.livejournal.com/73000.html where the author cites interesting historical photographs from the construction of the Trans-Siberian Railway in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. On them, too, we see only young forest everywhere. No thick old trees are observed. An even larger selection of old photographs from the construction of the Trans-Siberian Railway is here http://murzind.livejournal.com/900232.html
Thus, there are many facts and observations that indicate that in a large area of the Urals and Siberia there are virtually no forests older than 200 years. At the same time, I want to immediately make a reservation that I am not saying that there are no old forests in the Urals and Siberia at all. But precisely in those places where the disaster occurred, they are not there.
Most of our forests are young. They are between a quarter and a third of their lives. Apparently, in the 19th century certain events occurred that led to the almost total destruction of our forests. Our forests keep big secrets...
I understand your age-old sadness...
It was a wary attitude towards Alexei Kungurov’s statements regarding Perm forests and clearings at one of his conferences that prompted me to conduct this research. Well, of course! There was a mysterious hint of hundreds of kilometers of clearings in the forests and their age. I personally was hooked by the fact that I walk through the forest quite often and quite far, but I didn’t notice anything unusual.
And this time the amazing feeling was repeated - the more you understand, the more new questions appear. I had to re-read a lot of sources, from materials on forestry of the 19th century, to the modern “Instructions for carrying out forest management in the forest fund of Russia.” This did not add clarity, rather the opposite. But there was confidence that things are dirty here.
First amazing fact, which was confirmed - dimension quarterly network. A quarter network, by definition, is “a system of forest quarters created on the lands forest fund for the purpose of inventorying the forest fund, organizing and maintaining forestry and forest management."
The quarterly network consists of quarterly clearings. This is a straight strip cleared of trees and shrubs (usually up to 4 m wide), laid in the forest to mark the boundaries of forest blocks. During forest management, quarterly clearings are cut and cleared to a width of 0.5 m, and their expansion to 4 m is carried out in subsequent years by forestry workers.
In the picture you can see what these clearings look like in Udmurtia. The picture was taken from the program Google Earth.
The blocks are rectangular in shape. For measurement accuracy, a segment of 5 blocks wide is marked. It was 5340 m, which means that the width of 1 block is 1067 meters, or exactly 1 way mile. The quality of the picture leaves much to be desired, but I myself walk along these clearings all the time, and what you see from above I know well from the ground. Until that moment, I was firmly convinced that all these forest roads were the work of Soviet foresters. But why the hell did they need to mark out the neighborhood network? in versts?
I checked. The instructions state that blocks should be 1 by 2 km in size. The error at this distance is allowed no more than 20 meters. But 20 is not 340. However, all forest management documents stipulate that if block network projects already exist, then you should simply link to them. This is understandable; the work of laying clearings is a lot of work to redo.
Today there are already machines for cutting down glades (see. rice. higher), but we should forget about them, since almost the entire forest fund of the European part of Russia, plus part of the forest beyond the Urals, approximately to Tyumen, is divided into a verst block network. There are also kilometer ones, of course, because in last century The foresters were also doing something, but mostly on the milepost. In particular, in Udmurtia there are no kilometer-long clearings. This means that the design and practical construction of a block network in most of the forest areas of the European part of Russia were completed no later than 1918. It was at this time that the metric system of measures was adopted for mandatory use in Russia, and the mile gave way to the kilometer.
It turns out made with axes and jigsaws, if we, of course, correctly understand historical reality. Considering that the forest area of the European part of Russia is about 200 million hectares, this is titanic work. The calculation shows that total length the clearing is about 3 million km. For clarity, imagine the first lumberjack, armed with a saw or an ax. In a day he will be able to clear on average no more than 10 meters of clearing. But we must not forget that this work can be carried out mainly in winter time. This means that even 20,000 lumberjacks, working annually, would create our excellent verst block network for at least 80 years.
But there has never been such a number of workers involved in forest management. Based on articles from the 19th century, it is clear that there were always very few forestry specialists, and the funds allocated for these purposes could not cover such expenses. Even if we imagine that for this purpose they drove peasants from surrounding villages to do free work, it is still unclear who did this in sparsely populated areas Perm, Kirov, Vologda regions.
After this fact, it is no longer so surprising that the entire neighborhood network is tilted by about 10 degrees and is not directed towards the geographic North Pole, but, apparently, to a magnetic one (the markings were carried out using a compass, not a GPS navigator), which at that time should have been located approximately 1000 kilometers towards Kamchatka. And it’s not so confusing that the magnetic pole, according to official data from scientists, has never been there from the 17th century to the present day. It’s no longer scary that even today the compass needle points in approximately the same direction in which the quarterly network was made before 1918. All this cannot happen anyway! All logic falls apart.
But it is there. And in order to finish off the consciousness clinging to reality, I inform you that all this equipment also needs to be serviced. According to the norms, a complete audit takes place every 20 years. If it passes at all. And during this period of time, the “forest user” must monitor the clearings. Well, if in Soviet era If anyone was watching, it’s unlikely that over the past 20 years. But the clearings are not overgrown. There is a windbreak, but there are no trees in the middle of the road. But in 20 years, a pine seed that accidentally fell to the ground, of which billions are sown annually, grows up to 8 meters in height. Not only are the clearings not overgrown, you won’t even see stumps from periodic clearings. This is all the more striking in comparison with power lines, which special teams regularly clear of overgrown bushes and trees.
This is what typical clearings in our forests look like. Grass, sometimes there are bushes, but no trees. There are no signs of regular maintenance.
The second big mystery is the age of our forest, or trees in this forest. In general, let's go in order. First, let's figure out how long a tree lives. Here is the corresponding table.
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* In brackets are height and life expectancy in particularly favorable conditions.
IN different sources the numbers are slightly different, but not significantly. Pine and spruce should survive under normal conditions up to 300…400 years. You begin to understand how absurd everything is only when you compare the diameter of such a tree with what we see in our forests. A 300-year-old spruce should have a trunk with a diameter of about 2 meters. Well, like in a fairy tale. The question arises: Where are all these giants? No matter how much I walk through the forest, I haven’t seen anything thicker than 80 cm. There aren’t many of them. There are individual copies (in Udmurtia - 2 pine trees) which reach 1.2 m, but their age is also no more than 200 years.
In general, how does the forest live? Why do trees grow or die in it?
It turns out there is a concept "natural forest". This is a forest that lives its own life - it has not been cut down. He has distinguishing feature- low crown density from 10 to 40%. That is, some trees were already old and tall, but some of them fell affected by fungus or died, losing competition with their neighbors for water, soil and light. Large gaps form in the forest canopy. A lot of light begins to get there, which is very important in the forest struggle for existence, and young animals begin to actively grow. Therefore, a natural forest consists of different generations, and crown density is the main indicator of this.
But if the forest was clear-cut, then new trees for a long time grow simultaneously, crown density is high more than 40%. Several centuries will pass, and if the forest is not touched, then the struggle for a place in the sun will do its job. It will become natural again. Do you want to know how much natural forest there is in our country that is not affected by anything? Please, map of Russian forests.
Bright shades indicate forests with a high canopy density, that is, these are not “natural forests.” And these are the majority. The entire European part is indicated by saturated blue. This is as shown in the table: “Small-leaved and mixed forests. Forests with a predominance of birch, aspen, gray alder, often with an admixture coniferous trees or with separate sections coniferous forests. Almost all of them are derivative forests, formed on the site of primary forests as a result of logging, clearing, and forest fires.”.
On the mountains and tundra zone You don’t have to stop there, the rarity of crowns there may be due to other reasons. But the plains and middle lane covers clearly a young forest. How young? Go and check it out. It is unlikely that you will find a tree in the forest that is older than 150 years. Even a standard drill for determining the age of a tree is 36 cm long and is designed for a tree age of 130 years. How does this explain forest science? Here's what they came up with:
“Forest fires are quite common in most parts of the world. taiga zone European Russia. Moreover: forest fires in the taiga are so common that some researchers consider the taiga as a lot of burnt areas of different ages- more precisely, many forests formed on these burnt areas. Many researchers believe that forest fires are, if not the only, then at least the main by natural mechanism renewal of forests, replacement of old generations of trees with young ones..."
All this is called . That's where the dog is buried. The forest was burning, and was practically burning everywhere. And this, according to experts, main reason the age of our forests. Not fungus, not bugs, not hurricanes. Our entire taiga is in burnt areas, and after a fire, what remains is the same as after clear cutting. From here high crown density throughout almost the entire forest zone. Of course, there are exceptions - truly untouched forests in the Angara region, on Valaam and, probably, somewhere else in the vast expanses of our vast Motherland. There are really fabulously large trees there in their mass. And although these are small islands in the vast sea of taiga, they prove that the forest can be like this.
What is so common about forest fires that over the past 150...200 years they have burned the entire forest area of 700 million hectares? Moreover, according to scientists, in some checkerboard pattern observing the sequence, and certainly at different times?
First we need to understand the scale of these events in space and time. The fact that the main age of old trees in the bulk of forests is at least 100 years, suggests that the large-scale burns that so rejuvenated our forests occurred over a period of no more than 100 years. Translating into dates, for one only 19th century. To do this it was necessary to burn annually 7 million hectares forests.
Even as a result of large-scale forest arson in the summer of 2010, which all experts called catastrophic in volume, only 2 million. hectares. It turns out there is nothing “so ordinary” about this. The last justification for such a burned-out past of our forests could be the tradition of slash-and-burn agriculture. But how, in this case, can we explain the state of the forest in places where traditionally agriculture was not developed? In particular, in Perm region? Moreover, this method of farming involves labor-intensive cultural use of limited areas of forest, and not at all the unrestrained burning of large tracts in hot weather. summer time, yes with the breeze.
Having gone through everything possible options, it is safe to say that the scientific concept “dynamics of random violations” nothing in real life not justified, and is myth, intended to disguise the inadequate state of the current forests of Russia, and therefore events that led to this.
We will have to admit that our forests either burned intensely (beyond any norm) and constantly throughout the 19th century (which in itself is inexplicable and not recorded anywhere), or burned down at one time as a result some incident, which is why he furiously denies scientific world, having no arguments other than that in official history nothing like this is recorded.
To all this we can add that there were clearly fabulously large trees in old natural forests. It has already been said about the preserved areas of the taiga. It is worth giving an example in part deciduous forests. IN Nizhny Novgorod region and Chuvashia has a very favorable climate for deciduous trees. grows there huge amount oak trees But, again, you won’t find old copies. The same 150 years, no older. Older single copies are all the same. There is a photograph at the beginning of the article the largest oak tree in Belarus. It grows in Belovezhskaya Pushcha.
Its diameter is about 2 meters, and its age is estimated at 800 years, which, of course, is very conditional. Who knows, maybe he somehow survived the fires, this happens.
The largest oak tree in Russia is considered to be a specimen growing in the Lipetsk region. According to conventional estimates, he 430 years.
A special theme is bog oak. This is the one that is extracted mainly from the bottom of rivers. My relatives from Chuvashia told me that they pulled out huge specimens up to 1.5 m in diameter from the bottom. And there were such many.
This indicates the composition of the former oak forest, the remains of which lie at the bottom. This means that nothing prevents current oak trees from growing to such sizes. What, maybe earlier? “dynamics of random violations” did it work in a special way in the form of thunderstorms and lightning? No, everything was the same. So it turns out that the current forest simply has not yet reached maturity.
Let's summarize what we learned from this study. There are a lot of contradictions between the reality that we see with our own eyes and the official interpretation of the relatively recent past:
There is a developed block network over a vast area, which was designed in versts and was laid no later than 1918. The length of the clearings is such that 20,000 loggers, provided manual labor, it would take 80 years to create it. The clearings are maintained extremely irregularly, if at all, but they do not become overgrown.
On the other hand, according to historians and surviving articles on forestry, there was no funding of comparable scale and the required number of forestry specialists then there was no. There was no way to recruit such a quantity of free labor. There was no mechanization to facilitate this work.
We need to choose: either our eyes deceive us, or The 19th century wasn't like that at all, as historians tell us. In particular, there could be mechanization, commensurate with the described tasks. It’s interesting what this steam engine from the film “The Barber of Siberia” could have been intended for.
Or is Mikhalkov a completely unimaginable dreamer?
There could also have been less labor-intensive, effective technologies for laying and maintaining clearings, which have been lost today (some distant analogue of herbicides). It is probably stupid to say that Russia has not lost anything since 1917. Finally, it is possible that clearings were not cut, but trees were planted in blocks in areas destroyed by fire. This is not such nonsense compared to what science tells us. Although doubtful, it at least explains a lot.
Our forests are much younger than the natural lifespan of the trees themselves. This is evidenced by the official map of Russian forests and our eyes. The age of the forest is about 150 years, although pine and spruce under normal conditions grow up to 400 years and reach 2 meters in thickness. There are also separate areas of forest with trees of similar age.
According to experts, all our forests are burnt. It is the fires in their opinion, do not give the trees a chance to live to natural age. Experts do not even allow the thought of the simultaneous destruction of vast expanses of forest, believing that such an event could not go unnoticed. In order to justify this ashes, official science adopted the theory of “dynamics of random disturbances.” This theory proposes that forest fires are considered a common occurrence, destroying (according to some incomprehensible schedule) up to 7 million hectares of forest per year, although in 2010 even 2 million hectares destroyed as a result of deliberate forest fires were called catastrophe.
We need to choose: either our eyes are deceiving us again, or some grandiose events of the 19th century with particular impudence, they were not reflected in the official version of our past, just as neither ]]> Great Tartary ]]> nor the Great Northern Route fit into it. ]]> Atlantis ]]> with ]]> the fallen moon ]]> even then they didn’t fit. One-time destruction of 200...400 million hectares of forest it is even easier to imagine, and even to hide, than the undying, 100-year-old fire proposed for consideration by science.
So what's it about? age-old sadness Belovezhskaya Pushcha? Is it not about those severe wounds of the earth that the young forest covers? After all, giant fires don’t happen on their own...
Izhevsk
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