Land-Use and the Forest Sector

Vladimir Stolbovoi, International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis, Laxenburg, Austria

Background

Natural dynamic processes of material transfers and energy flows have taken place at global, regional and local scales, resulting in both gradual and catastrophic transformations of the atmosphere, lithosphere, hydrosphere and biosphere.

However, changes of the land cover driven by anthropogenic forces are currently the most important and most rapid of all such changes (IGBP Report, No. 35 - HDP Rep. No 7). As the levels of knowledge and technology develop, human beings acquire an ever-increasing capability to transform the surface of the Earth.

The implications of global change for sustaining human society and its well-being have created a sense of urgency in understanding the consequences of land cover changes. This has resulted in the establishment of international research efforts, such as the International Geosphere-Biosphere Program (IGBP). In recent years much progress has been made in interfacing and synthesizing traditional natural science disciplines.

Human activities have been identified as one of the major elements affecting the dynamics of the Earth's system. It has only recently been acknowledged that too little attention was given to these activities and that an improved understanding of the human driving forces of global change is needed to make meaningful scenarios for the future state of the Earth system.

The International Human Dimensions Program (IHDP) has been launched to investigate demographic, economic, technological, social and political perspectives of global change.

Interactions between biophysical parameters and socioeconomic conditions result in land use. Land use refers to the purposes for which humans exploit the land and can be characterized by activities like agriculture, forestry, mineral extraction and recreation. According to modern understanding, the Earth operates as a system of interrelated subsystems or elements, where changes in one sub-system may have some positive or negative reactions in others. Thus, the idea of sustainability can only be achieved based on results by multisectoral analysis based on interrelations among different, very often competitive, land uses as opposed to individual treatment of each sector.

Tasks

• To demonstrate the complexity of land use patterns in Russia and their possible changes in the future.

• To overview the status of soil degradation in Russia as an indicator of non-sustainability of land use and the consequences for the forest sector.

Approach

Multidisciplinary and multisectoral approaches of the land-use analysis are based on the assumption that the Earth incorporates a wide range of closely interrelated systems varying from natural to artificial and from managed to unmanaged.

According to FAO (1976) land is: “An area of the Earth’s solid surface, the characteristics of which embrace all reasonably stable, or predictably cyclic, attributes of the biosphere vertically above or below this area, including those of the atmosphere, the soil and underlying geology, the hydrology, the plant and animal populations, and the results of past and present human activity.”

Results

The role of forests in landscape formation is closely interrelated with other land-uses. Their significance and specific functional role differs in a variety of land-use patterns. According to the State land account (National Land report, 1996) the Land Fund (LF) of Russia amounts to 1709.8 million ha (Table 1). The structure of the LF of Russia shows that Forested Areas occupy 784.7 million ha, corresponding to approximately 46% of the total area of the country. More than 620.5 million ha (79 %) of this area is under management by forest authorities.

About 164.2 million ha (21%) of the forests are managed by other organizations, of which 134.4 million ha of forests are managed by agricultural enterprises.

However, it should be pointed out that the classification of forest land given in the Land Fund data (National Land report, 1996) is different from the classification used in the State Forest Account and presented in Section 3.1. In the latter group, the forests play a very important role regulating the circulation of nutrients between forests and agricultural ecosystems, and the hydrological balance of a specific territory. About 13 million ha of forests are set aside for land protection whose objective is to improve the site characteristics and mitigate degradation processes. About 8.8 million ha of the total forests are located in urban and industrial areas. These forests are very valuable and play extremely significant ecological and recreational roles.

The total land area managed by forest enterprises is 838.6 million ha (Table 1) but only 74 % of this area is covered by forests. These numbers show that on average 26% of the forests are occurring in combination with other land use or land cover patterns, which are under management by different authorities. In fact, intersectoral overlapping of various land use or land cover patterns can easily be recognized by discrepancies in the accounts of the Forest Fund, Forested Area, etc., made by different organizations responsible for land (ROSKOMZEM) and forests (ROSKOMLES) in Russia.

Analyses of the historical expansion of agriculture in various natural zones (Table 2) shows that 15% of the forest zones in Russia are occupied by different combinations of forests and tilled areas. More than half of this territory is represented by land-use combinations in which tilled areas vary from 50 to 80 %.

In the forest-steppe zone, 90% of the land is represented by a combination of natural and cultivated lands. The proportion of tilled areas in these territories is on average 85%. The steppe zone demonstrates very intensive agricultural intervention (more that 92% of the territory is represented by a combination of natural and cultivated lands) and tilled areas that exceed 85%.

The specific features of land-use combinations are driven by a variety of natural conditions e.g., climate, relief, soils, etc. and a wide range of socioeconomic conditions (population density, infrastructure, economic activities, etc.). These conditions vary widely, both spatially and temporally and, the mosaics of their combinations change from one area to another and in a temporal perspective.

It has been proposed to use the dynamics of different changes of ecosystems in the forest biomes (Isakov, et. al., 1986) as indicators for the assessment of current status and future changes in land-use (Table 3).

Intensive exploitation of the taiga took place during 1930-1980 from Europe to the Far East. Broad-leaved and coniferous broad-leaved forests (Table 3) were originally represented by seminatural self-maintaining ecosystems and were widely distributed in the beginning of XIX century. During the XX century the human impact increased considerably and the anthropogenic ecosystems expanded substantially. It is expected that in the next century this development will continue causing the absolute dominance of anthropogenic ecosystems. Due to this perspective, to maintain the ecological balances different regulations have to be implemented.

Thus, based on the changes, which have taken place during the last 200 years it can be estimated that the share of indigenous ecosystems in the taiga (broad-leaved and coniferous broad-(broad-leaved forests) will, according to some scenarios, dramatically decrease in the beginning of the next century and practically disappear by the end of the century. Anthropogenic ecosystems which are a result of human intervention will dominate. This result calls for strengthening of multisectoral cooperation of all users of land, policy and decision-makers to prevent such an alarming scenario from being fulfilled.

Soil degradation is caused by humans in the utilization and manipulation of natural and environmental resources. Maintenance of the productive potential of land resources, and control of the land degradation, are fundamental elements of a sustainable land use (Pieri, et al. 1995). However, as was shown above, the reality demonstrates intricate mosaics of different land-uses. The role of forests in landscape formation is closely interrelated with other land-uses. It means that sustainable development in general can only be achieved in harmony with all land-uses. The task of spatial organization of a territory based on interrelations between all land uses is a very important issue. For each territory or landscape a substantial area of forests must be set aside from an ecological perspective (climate-, water-, soil protection, etc.). These forests will provide autoregulation and self-reproduction in a territory or a landscape. The amount of these areas required within a region may serve as a criterion for land protection.

As a negative example of the effect of the reduction of forest areas, the decline in the forest-steppe zone of the European part of Russia can be used, which resulted in degenerated river floodplains. This forest decline led to erosion and decreased ground water tables, which in turn caused serious problems in the restoration of the vegetation on areas covered with forests not long ago.

Soil degradation includes water and wind erosion, secondary salinization, desertification, underfloods, compaction, disturbances of organic horizons caused by industrial wood harvests, disturbances caused by fires, thermokarst, and surface corrosion, caused by overgrazing and industrial activities.

The total extent of soil degradation in Russia is 242.6 million ha or 14.5% of the soil cover (Stolbovoi and Fischer, 1996).

Soil compaction is the most widespread type of soil degradation (48.2 million ha). It should be emphasized that the increased soil density due to compaction may cause irreversible changes, and it is possible that the soil will lose the ability of self-discompaction.

Soil water and wind erosion (deflation) is the second largest type (25.2 million) of soil degradation caused by improper tillage.

Permafrost embraces the north European territory and north of the West Siberian territory and nearly the entire territory east of the Yenisei river. The total area, covered by permafrost, is estimated to be more than 1100 million ha (about 65% of the entire land area).

Overgrazing of tundra causes processes of surface corrosion (60.2 million ha) in permafrost soil (soilfluction, landslides, etc.).

Thermokarst (31.3 million ha) is the type of soil degradation which develops mainly on deer’s pastures. It is basically caused by industrial activities such as mining, and infrastructural development.

Disturbances of the soil organic horizon in forests caused by fires are estimated (average for a 10-year period) to constitute 15.4 million ha or about 2% of the total forested area.

Protection measures, as a result of erosion, have been implemented over the total area of Russia. Water erosion is combated by land management practices such as contour-tillage, contour-strip-cropping, minimum-tillage, and land-use design. To prevent wind erosion, joint plantation and land management practices are applied.

Plantation management includes application of fertilizers, crop rotations, increased plant density, stubble-mulching and agroforestry.

Russia still has 1472.5 million ha (85.5 %) of soils which are naturally and artificially stable: under natural vegetation (1264.3 million ha); natural bare land (30.1 million ha) developed in deserts, high mountain zones; and human influenced soils (177.5 million ha).