Century-old trees of 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. Which is less than 1% of the 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 territory of 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 many other cities. As of the beginning of August 2010, fires in Russia 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 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 terms of 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!... "
Thereby public services they 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 burned central Russia- would have caused such smoke, such carbon monoxide poisoning, such economic losses - in the form of thousands of burned villages, such human losses - that it would certainly be 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.A version of mass cutting.
On an area of 800 million hectares - even with modern technology- benozipil, a very long and difficult undertaking. Now all loggers in Russia cut down a maximum of 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.
Most of our forests are young. They are between a quarter and a third of life. 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 quarter 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 time 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.
Second big mystery- This 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 the 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. All European part 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 natural mechanism for forest renewal, replacing 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. It's really fabulous there big trees in its entirety. 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 large-scale fires, which 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 the Perm region? Moreover, this method of farming involves labor-intensive cultural use of limited areas of forest, and not at all the uncontrolled burning of large tracts in the hot summer season, and with the wind.
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 the fabulously large trees in the old natural forests obviously they were. It has already been said about the preserved areas of the taiga. It is worth giving an example regarding deciduous forests. In the Nizhny Novgorod region and Chuvashia there are very favorable climate For hardwood trees. grows there great 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 a lot of.
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 very 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 did not have. 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 suggests 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 unquenchable, 100-year-old fire proposed for consideration by science.
So what is the age-old sadness about? 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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Some time ago I wondered why in our forests there are no thousand-year-old sorcerer oaks, the images of which emerge so vividly from our genetic memory when we read those that have come down to us folk tales. Where are those dense forests, which we all imagine so well? Let us remember the lines of V.S. Vysotsky, and these same thickets immediately appear before your eyes:
In the reserved and dense terrible Murom forests
All kinds of evil spirits roam in clouds and sow fear in passers-by,
Howls howl that your dead,
If there are nightingales there, then they are robbers.
It's scary, it's creepy!
In the enchanted swamps there live kikimoras,
They will tickle you to the point of hiccups and drag you to the bottom.
Whether you're on foot or on horseback, they'll steal you
And the goblin just roam around the forest.
It's scary, it's creepy!
And the man, merchant and warrior found himself in a dense forest,
Who for what purpose: who was drunk, and who foolishly climbed into the thicket.
Did they disappear for a reason or without a reason?
As soon as we saw them all, it was as if they had disappeared.
It's scary, it's creepy!
Something similar appears in the famous song about hares:
In the dark blue forest, where the aspen trees tremble,
Where leaves fall from witch oaks
In the clearing, hares mowed the grass at midnight
And at the same time they chanted strange words:
We have a business - at the most terrible hour we mow the magical grass.”
And the sorcerer oaks whisper something in the fog,
Someone's shadows rise by the filthy swamps,
Hares mow the grass, tryn-grass in the clearing
And out of fear they sing the song faster and faster:
“But we don’t care, but we don’t care, let us be afraid of the wolf and the owl,
We have a business - at the most terrible hour we mow the magical grass.”
In general, I immersed myself in this topic, and it turned out that I was not the only one who asked this question. I discovered many interesting theories, ranging from continental floods to... nuclear war 1812, unleashed by alien invaders. In general, I had a lot of fun))) Meanwhile, a fact is a fact - in the first old photos of construction railways and other objects in the vastness of Russia there are no old forests! There is a young forest, which is a lot younger than that what we see around us today. Even the photo from the site of the “Tunguska meteorite” does not impress with the thickness of the trunks. There are matchstick-thin trunks of approximately the same thickness. No sorcerer oaks for you. At the same time, in some European countries and America with oaks and other trees (for example, sequoias) everything is in order...
The official version claims that forests do not live to their mature age due to periodic fires that occur here and there throughout Siberia. But it’s still strange that throughout Russia there were no photographs from really dense forest, with a thousand-year-old oak forest (and oaks live for 1500 years). In addition, from the photographs, one gets the feeling that the forests are all approximately the same age, which, in theory, should not be the case in the case of periodic relatively local fires.
Despite my suspicions, I admit that the age of the already grown forest is difficult to determine from photographs. We only distinguish a forest from young growth, and when it is already more than 40 years old, then without a specific measurement of the diameters of the trunks, who knows how old it is, 50, 80 or 100. And from here we can assume that any forest in Siberia burns more often than once every 150-200 years. But in the west of the Moscow region there have been no large forest fires for a long time.
Let's look at the forest near my dacha. He looks no more than 100 years old. Let's see what it was like here in the 1770s. Let's open a fragment of the survey map of the Zvenigorod district of the Moscow region. I marked the location of our dachas with a blue square:
The stripes are arable land. It is noteworthy that to the right of the dachas we see a forest, but below - arable land. Where the forest now grows, there was arable land, and the forest is indicated on the site of the current field, which is located on our side of Moscow. It is interesting that even the Pokrovka River, which now begins in the field near the White House and goes through the forest, on this map begins in the forest, and then goes among the arable lands. Let's trace the condition of this area on other maps.
Another survey map from the same period. If the dotted line marks the boundaries of the forest, then, surprisingly, the forest is present on it in almost the same configuration as it is now.
Our ravine with the forked tongue is not visible here. It looks like the wrong piece of card is inserted in this place. Above you can see a similar forked ravine, but this is not our ravine, but the one located behind the Vesna SNT. I determined the location of our dachas by superimposing the previous map on this one - all other objects more or less coincided, which means the location of the current location of the dachas was determined correctly.
The village of Pokrovskoye on these two maps is located very close to our ravine. Maps at that time were compiled by eye, so such strong distortions were normal. Based on this, I can assume that the arable lands on the previous map are not where our forest is now, but near the village of Pokrovskoye, but due to severe distortions it turned out that they stuck almost closely to our ravine. In addition, the forest on the first map to the right of the ravine is shown rather conditionally, so it is possible that the distance to it was greater, and the field could have been deployed incorrectly. In this sense, the second map seems more accurate to me. There, the boundaries of the forest are clearly marked, just like the Pokrovka River.
Thus, based on the second map, we can conclude that in the 1770s the forest grew in approximately the same place as now (plus it also grew in the area where the White House now stands). That is, 250 years ago there was a forest here too. But where are the 250-year-old trees then? No.
Let's look at more recent maps. Maybe the forest was being cut down there, and this was somehow reflected in them?
Schubert's map, based on surveys that took place in 1838-1839. The most accurate and detailed map of this area of all time, republished with infrastructural additions for almost the next century. The so-called “one-layout”, that is, there is 1 verst in 1 inch (1 cm = 420 m). Here I doubled the scale for convenience:
The map was compiled scientific methods, so there is practically no distortion. We see the same picture that we saw on survey maps created 50-70 years earlier. That is, all this time the forest remained in its place.
Another map, based on surveys that took place a little later, in 1852-1853:
Although this is a more recent map, it is less detailed. There is no Davydkovo-Burtsevo road on it. But the relief is better designed. For 10 new years, nothing happened to the forest either.
Wow! We see our forest clearing! That is, immediately after the revolution it already existed! The forest is still there and has not disappeared anywhere. It has been standing for 150 years!
Let's continue observing. During the Great Patriotic War A German spy plane took aerial photographs of our area in 1942, on which we can see not only the presence of the forest, but also its condition:
What do we see? The Kiev highway appeared, but the forest almost exactly corresponds to what we saw on the maps earlier. However we see huge clearing on the right, which cuts into the forest in a triangle from the side of the Kyiv highway, as well as a completely bald clearing a little to the left. Our forest clearing that connects the nose is also visible white field with a bald clearing near the highway. I note that if you didn’t know that there was a clearing in that place, it would be quite difficult to identify it on the spot today, although there is a subtle change in the character of the forest.
Photo from an American spy satellite in 1966. 25 years have passed, and the deforestation is almost unnoticeable:
But the open woodland on the right at the end of the field has now been completely cut down and turned into a new field, and the edge of our forest on the side of the field has been slightly trimmed.
An image from 1972, also from an American spy satellite:
There are no changes in the forest, but it is clear that instead of our ravine, a pond has appeared, blocked by a dam, and the dirt roads have become more rutted.
The boundaries of the forest are the same as in the 1972 photo. The forest is already 200 years old, but there are still no old trees in it! By the way, the above map in paper form hung on my wall in the 80s. It gave me great pleasure to see our garden plots there!
Now let's look at Google satellite images last period. Early spring 2006:
Compared to 1966-1972, the forest has not changed much due to the clearing of the oil product pipeline laid in 1974 (visible especially well in the forest south of the dachas). This photo is also notable for the fact that we can clearly see an evergreen pine piece of forest in it (in the upper right corner of the forest). In the summer photo of the same year it is no longer so noticeable:
It is interesting to see a winter photo from February 2009. The only winter photo of our dachas in the entire history of Google cartography:
Now, pay attention! A photo from 2012, the forest is 240 years old and still in order:
Here's a photo from 2013! Part of the forest has already been cut down! The felling took place in winter with huge tracked vehicles, their traces are visible:
At the same time, the active expansion phase of Vnukovo Airport began (seen on the right).
And finally, a modern shot from 2017 (though already from Yandex). The clearing is overgrown with bushes except for the plateau on the right:
Thus, despite such attractive theories about a cataclysm erasing it from our memory for some reason, I can assume that our forest was still periodically gradually cut down and then grew back. The same can be assumed about the entire Moscow region. Over the past centuries, forests around cities have been actively cut down, grew again and were cut down again. It is reasonable to assume that the Siberian forests, but already on a large industrial scale. In addition, they periodically burned. In previous centuries, when they were not extinguished, they could burn for a very long time until they were extinguished by rain, which means it becomes clear why they are all so young.
But why don't forests burn on the American continent? Perhaps there is a different climate there, more intense rains, which immediately extinguishes a tree set on fire by lightning?
But then the question is, why do we so easily imagine these thousand-year-old oak forests, as if we have a memory of them somewhere deep in the subconscious? Why are dense forests so often described in our fairy tales? So, several centuries ago they still existed? Maybe. After all, there were few people, there had not yet been large-scale industrial logging, and the eastern regions of Russia with a more pronounced continental climate were more susceptible to fires from lightning. Well, all that remains is to regret that those fabulous times have already passed...
By the way, if you are prone to conspiracy theories, read this person, it’s very interesting:
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 is precisely established that on our planet there are about 50 trees whose age exceeds the 1000-year mark. In reality, there are much more such plants, since many of them are located in hard-to-reach 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, latest methods tree age dating suggests that the longest-lived of all trees on Earth are TISS s.
Yews are relics that have 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 Black Sea coast Caucasus, there is a yew-boxwood grove in which 600-1000-year-old yew trees 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 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 it is impossible to calculate the life time from the annual rings. 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
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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 "collected during lunar eclipse» yew shoots. 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 title “ 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 the belief in its 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 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 the brevity of human life and how 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 it is.
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.
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