Russia
The area covered in this region was the contiguous area of Russia, without the Kaliningrad Oblast, which is included in the Europe region in this study. The central belt of Russia had vast areas of forest, mainly evergreen needleleaf in the west and deciduous needleleaf in the east, with sparse trees and parkland and deciduous forests interspersed (Map 1). The areas above the arctic circle were generally without forest, except in Russian Lappland and south of the Khatanga river. In general deciduous broadleaf forests were more frequent towards the south of the region, particularly in the Kamchatka Oblast in the east, the southern part of the Ural mountains and near Krasnodar at the Russian east coast of the Black Sea.
Although only four forest types were recorded in Russia there was a great variety of ecological zones (19, see Map 2). The significance of this for conservation is that one forest type that exists in, for example, five different ecological zones, has five possible variants that should be considered individually for their conservation value and protection needs. Much of the central belt of Russia was in the boreal forest zones (Map 2). Further towards the north there were polar ecological zones, which also supported some forest. Towards the south west there were the cool temperate forest and steppe zones.
Table 1 shows that of more than eight million km² of forest in Russia, only just over 150 000 are under protection (1.8%, from Table 1). All four forest types were 2% or less protected. Deciduous needleleaf forest was the most abundant forest type in Russia, but less than 0.5% was protected (Fig. 1, Table 2).
Forests covered a greater area in the boreal moist forest than in any other ecological zone, and were only 1% protected. All four forest types were represented in this ecological zone (Table 3). The excluded forest category in Table 3 was generated by mismatches between the borders of water bodies and coasts between the ecological zones coverage and the forest types coverage (see Methods). The forests in the cool temperate wet forest zone had the highest percentage protection, but these had relatively limited cover in comparison to forests in many of the other zones (Fig. 2). Forests in all other zones were less than 10 % protected. Forests in seven of the 17 zones had 0% protected. Forest cover in all these zones was relatively low (Fig. 2). Three of them were forest ecological zones: boreal rain forest, warm temperate dry forest and warm temperate moist forest (Table 3). Of these the first supported three forest types, the warm zones only deciduous broadleaf forest. The forests in these warm zones should be examined as one of the priorities (along with others outlined below) for the expansion of the forest conservation system.
Each forest type was represented in at least 9 different ecological zones, and each combination may represent a different variant of each forest type to consider for protection (Table 3). There were vast areas of some variants without any or with extremely little protection: the deciduous broadleaf forest in the boreal dry bush and the boreal rain forest zones, the evergreen needleleaf forest in the polar dry tundra and boreal rain forest zones, the deciduous needleleaf forest in the polar dry tundra, boreal desert and cool temperate steppe zones, and the sparse trees and parkland type in the polar desert, polar moist tundra, polar wet tundra and boreal moist forest zones. These could represent major gaps in the forest conservation system.
In an attempt to impartially indicate natural, undisturbed forest variants which may be under the most immediate threat of destruction, a list was drawn up that pinpointed those under 100 km2 in extent with none protected. These are variants of relatively limited extent and which do not even have any legal protection; possibly much less actual protection. Some of these forest variants may indeed be truly rare and unprotected types, others are clearly fragments of forest at the end of their ranges, as for example certain types of dry forest should not normally occur in moist ecological zones, or vice versa. An in-depth analysis of these forest variants is outside the scope of this study. There were 5 of the 51 variants in Russia that met these criteria, and these are listed below (T=tropical forest type, N=non-tropical forest type):
The percentage of the zones that were forested was high (greater than 50%) for eight of the 19 zones in the region (Table 4). These included tundra, bush and forest zones. Three zones had less than 0.5% forest cover; these were desert or steppe zones (Table 4). Only three zones had a high enough area of protected forest that it registered as above 0% of the zone (>0.5%). One was quite high at 22% (cool temperate wet forest). Of all the forest ecological zones only one had a percentage forest cover below 32%, the warm temperate dry forest (only 2%, Table 4). No forests in this zone were protected (Table 3, Table 4). The total area of this zone was relatively small, and there were only 101 km² of forest recorded from there. It was located around the Krasnodar Kray region near the Sea of Azov.
Go back to previous page.