Russia has long experience and a rich tradition of research into
forest growth, including forest productivity and its links to forest
management. However, even from within this great wealth
of knowledge, forest growth estimates for the whole country and
for the dominant forest species of Russia cannot be produced in
a direct, consistent, and transparent manner.
Russia’s so-called Forest Fund comprises some 1.2 billion hectares, approximately
775 million of which are areas of productive forests. Yet within Russia’s
current forest inventory system, it is impossible to obtain either net or gross
growth indicators. Growth estimates are limited to an assessment of the net increment
based on the change in growing stock over time. Naturally, there are large
variations in the existing estimates of real growth rates in Russia. However,
as these vary from 1.5–2.5 billion m3/year for gross growth and 0.7–1.2
billion m3/year for net growth, they are far too wide to form a solid planning
foundation for any forestry issue in Russia.
In the mid-1990s IIASA’s Forestry Program began to develop a modeling framework
for the pan-Russian analysis of forest productivity and growth. At the
same time, huge databases were assembled in Russia based on growth information
collected from experimental plots, growth investigations of different kinds,
and other important research.
Though the first Interim Reports on this activity were presented in 1996, the
work has continued. During the last 10 years new models have been developed
for individual species, and additional data have been collected with the goal
of achieving a reliable basis for analyzing the growth and productivity of the
main Russian forest species at the pan-Russian level. The significance of this
work—a multi-person, multi-year effort on the part of the Forestry Program
and its colleagues in Russia—has been heightened by the increasingly important
context of global change.
The Russian Federal Forest Service has provided a careful professional analysis
of the materials, such as the models and tables, which are presented on the CD-ROM
in their complete form, and has recommended their practical use within Russian
forestry and forest management. The CD-ROM also includes a selection of
some of the very diverse information available on forests and forest management
in Russia.
It is our wish that Russian authorities will find the information
on the CD-ROM valuable and that they will use it not only for the
development of sustainable forest management in Russia but also
as an input to policy formulation with respect to Russian forests.
We hope too that this CD-ROM, containing information that will
permit future analysis of one of the world’s largest wood
baskets, will also be of use to those in the international scientific
community working in different aspects of research into Russian
forestry and the forest sector.
Sten Nilsson
IIASA, March 2007
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