Russian forests keep great secrets

2024 Author: Seth Attwood | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 15:55

Most of our forests are young. Their age ranges from a quarter to a third of life. Apparently, in the 19th century, there were some events that led to the almost total destruction of our forests. Our forests keep great secrets …

It was the wary attitude towards the statements of Alexei Kungurov about the Perm forests and glades, at one of his conferences, that prompted me to conduct this study. Well, of course! There was a mysterious hint of hundreds of kilometers of forest clearings and their age. I was personally hooked by the fact that I walk in the forest quite often and far enough, but I did not notice anything unusual.

And this time an 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 forest management in the forest fund of Russia." This did not add clarity, rather the opposite. But there was a certainty that the matter was unclean here.

The first surprising fact that was confirmed is the size of the quarterly network. The quarterly network is, by definition, "The system of forest quarters, created on the lands of the forest fund for the purpose of inventorying the forest fund, organizing and conducting forestry and forest use."

The block network consists of block glades. This is a rectilinear strip (usually up to 4 m wide) freed from trees and shrubs, laid in the forest in order to mark the boundaries of forest quarters. In the course of forest management, cutting and clearing of a quarter glade to a width of 0.5 m is carried out, and their expansion to 4 m is carried out in subsequent years by employees of the forestry enterprise.

In the picture you can see how these glades look in Udmurtia. The picture was taken from the program "Google Earth" (see Fig. 2). The quarters are rectangular. For measurement accuracy, a 5-block wide segment is marked. It was 5340 m, which means that the width of 1 block is 1067 meters, or exactly 1 mile. The quality of the picture leaves much to be desired, but I myself constantly walk along these glades, 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 up the quarter network in miles?

Checked it out. In the instructions, the quarters are supposed to be marked with a size of 1 by 2 km. The error at such a distance is allowed no more than 20 meters. But 20 is not 340. However, in all documents on forest management it is stipulated that if projects of the quarterly network already exist, then you should simply stick to them. It is understandable, the work on the laying of clearings is a lot of work to redo.

Today there are already machines for cutting openings (see Fig. 3), but we should forget about them, since practically the entire forest fund of the European part of Russia, plus a part of the forest beyond the Urals, approximately to Tyumen, is divided into a mile-long block network. There is also a kilometer-long one, of course, because in the last century the foresters were also doing something, but mostly it was a mile-long one. In particular, there are no kilometer-long glades in Udmurtia. This means that the project and the practical laying of the quarterly network in most of the forest areas of the European part of Russia were made no later than 1918. It was at this time in Russia that the metric system of measures was adopted for compulsory use, and a verst gave way to a kilometer.

It turns out that it was done 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 a titanic work. The calculation shows that the total length of the glades is about 3 million km. For clarity, imagine the 1st lumberjack armed with a saw or an ax. In a day, he will be able to clear an average of no more than 10 meters of glades. But we must not forget that these works can be carried out mainly in the winter. This means that even 20,000 lumberjacks, working annually, would have created our excellent milestone network for at least 80 years.

But there has never been such a number of workers engaged in forest management. From the materials of the articles of 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 costs. Even if we imagine that for this they drove the peasants from the surrounding villages to free work, it is still unclear who did this in the sparsely populated areas of the Perm, Kirov, Vologda regions.

After this fact, it is no longer so surprising that the entire block network is tilted by about 10 degrees and is directed not to the geographic North Pole, but, apparently, to the magnetic one (the markings were made using a compass, not a GPS navigator), which was supposed to be time to be located about 1000 kilometers in the direction of Kamchatka. And it is not so embarrassing that the magnetic pole, according to the official data of scientists, has never been there from the 17th century to the present day. It’s not even scary that even today the compass needle points in approximately the same direction in which the quarter network was made before 1918. All the same, all this cannot be! 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 economy must also be serviced. According to the norms, a full audit takes place every 20 years. If it goes away at all. And during this period of time the "forest user" should watch over the clearings. Well, if in Soviet times someone followed, then over the past 20 years it is unlikely. But the glades were not overgrown. There is a windbreak, but there are no trees in the middle of the road. But in 20 years, a seed of a pine tree that has accidentally fallen to the ground, of which billions are sown every year, grows up to 8 meters in height. The glades are not only not overgrown, you will not even see stumps from periodic clearing. This is all the more striking, in comparison with the power lines, which are regularly cleared by special teams of overgrown shrubs 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 (see Fig. 4 and Fig. 5).

The second big mystery is the age of our forest, or the 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.

* In brackets - height and life expectancy in especially favorable conditions.

In different sources, the numbers differ slightly, but not significantly. Pine and spruce should, under normal conditions, live up to 300 … 400 years. You begin to understand how ridiculous everything is only when you compare the diameter of such a tree with what we see in our forests. Spruce 300 years old 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 have not seen those thicker than 80 cm. There are none in the mass. There are individual specimens (in Udmurtia - 2 pines) that 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 that there is a concept of "natural forest". This is a forest that lives its own life - it was not cut down. It has a distinctive feature - low crown density from 10 to 40%. That is, some trees were already old and tall, but some of them fell, affected by the fungus, or died, losing the competition with neighbors for water, soil and light. Large gaps are formed in the forest canopy. A lot of light begins to get there, which is very important in the forest struggle for existence, and young growth begins to actively grow. Therefore, a natural forest consists of different generations, and crown density is the main indicator of this.

But if the forest has undergone clear felling, then new trees grow for a long time at the same time, the crown density is high over 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 (see Fig. 6).

Forests with a high density of crowns are marked with bright shades, that is, these are not "natural forests". And they are in the majority. The entire European part is marked with a deep blue color. This, as indicated in the table: “Small-leaved and mixed forests. Forests with a predominance of birch, aspen, gray alder, often with an admixture of coniferous trees or with separate areas of coniferous forests. Almost all of them are derivative forests, formed in the place of primary forests as a result of felling, clearing, forest fires”.

You don't have to stop in the mountains and the tundra zone, there the rarity of crowns may be due to other reasons. But the plains and the middle strip are covered by a clearly young forest. How young? Go and check. It is unlikely that you will find a tree over 150 years old in the forest. 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 forest science explain this? Here's what they came up with:

“Forest fires are a fairly common phenomenon for most of the taiga zone of European Russia. Moreover, forest fires in the taiga are so common that some researchers consider the taiga as a set of burns of different ages - more precisely, a lot of forests that have formed on these burns. Many researchers believe that forest fires are, if not the only, then at least the main natural mechanism of forest renewal, replacement of old generations of trees with young ones …"

All this is called "the dynamics of random violations." This is where the dog is buried. The forest burned, and burned almost everywhere. And this, according to experts, is the main reason for the small age of our forests. Not fungus, not bugs, not hurricanes. All of our taiga stands on burnt-out areas, and after the fire the same remains as after clear cutting. Hence the high crown density practically throughout the entire forest zone. Of course, there are exceptions - really untouched forests in Priangarye, on Valaam and, probably, elsewhere in the vastness of our vast Motherland. There are really fabulously large trees in their mass. And although these are small islands in the endless sea of taiga, they prove that the forest can be like that.

What is so common in forest fires that over the past 150 … 200 years they have burned up the entire forest area of 700 million hectares? And, according to scientists, in a certain checkerboard order, observing the order, and certainly at different times?

First you 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 the forests is at least 100 years suggests that large-scale burnings, so rejuvenated our forests, occurred over a period of no more than 100 years. Translating into dates, for the 19th century alone. To do this, it was necessary to burn 7 million hectares of forest annually.

Even as a result of large-scale forest arson in the summer of 2010, which all experts called catastrophic in terms of volume, only 2 million hectares were burnt. It turns out that there is nothing "so ordinary" about it. The last justification for such a burning past of our forests could be the tradition of slash-and-burn agriculture. But how, in this case, to explain the state of the forest in places where traditionally agriculture has not been developed? In particular, in the Perm Territory? Moreover, this method of farming involves the laborious cultural use of limited areas of the forest, and not at all unrestrained arson of large tracts in the hot summer season, but with a breeze.

After going through all the possible options, we can say with confidence that the scientific concept of "dynamics of random violations" is not substantiated by anything in real life, and is a myth designed to mask the inadequate state of the current forests of Russia, and therefore the events that led to this.

We will have to admit that our forests either strenuously (beyond any norm) and constantly burned throughout the 19th century (which in itself cannot be explained by anything and has not been recorded anywhere), or burned down at the same time as a result of some incident, which is why the scientific world is violently denying it. no arguments, except that nothing of the kind is recorded in the official history.

To all this, it can be added that fabulously large trees were clearly in the old natural forests. It has already been said about the preserved preserved areas of the taiga. It is worth giving an example in the part of deciduous forests. The Nizhny Novgorod region and Chuvashia have a very favorable climate for deciduous trees. A huge number of oaks grow there. But again, you will not find old copies. The same 150 years old, no older. Older single copies of everything. At the beginning of the article, there is a photograph of the largest oak tree in Belarus. It grows in Belovezhskaya Pushcha (see Fig. 1). Its diameter is about 2 meters, and its age is estimated at 800 years, which, of course, is rather arbitrary. Who knows, maybe he somehow survived the fires, it happens. The largest oak in Russia is considered to be a specimen growing in the Lipetsk region. According to conditional estimates, it is 430 years old (see Fig. 7).

A special theme is bog oak. This is the one that is recovered mainly from the bottom of the rivers. My relatives from Chuvashia said that they pulled huge specimens up to 1.5 m in diameter from the bottom. And there were many of them (see Fig. 8). This indicates the composition of the former oak forest, the remains of which lie at the bottom. This means that nothing prevents the current oak trees from growing to such sizes. Did the "dynamics of random disturbances" in the form of thunderstorms and lightning work in a special way before? No, everything was the same. So it turns out that the current forest has simply not yet reached maturity.

Let's summarize what we got from this study. There is a lot of contradictions in reality, which we observe with our own eyes, with the official interpretation of the relatively recent past:

- There is a developed district network on a huge area, which was designed in versts and was laid no later than 1918. The length of the glades is such that 20,000 lumberjacks, subject to manual labor, would have created it for 80 years. The glades are serviced very irregularly, if at all, but they are not overgrown.

- On the other hand, according to the version of historians and the surviving articles on forestry, there was no funding of a commensurate scale and the required number of forestry specialists at that time. There was no way to recruit such a large amount of free labor. There was no mechanization capable of facilitating this work.

We have to choose: either our eyes are deceiving us, or the 19th century was not at all what historians tell us. In particular, there could be mechanization commensurate with the tasks described. What could be interesting for this steam engine from the movie "The Barber of Siberia" (see Fig. 9). Or is Mikhalkov an absolutely inconceivable dreamer?

There could have been less time-consuming, efficient technologies for laying and maintaining clearings, which are lost today (a kind of remote analogue of herbicides). Finally, it is possible that they did not cut through the glades, and planted trees in neighborhoods in the areas destroyed by the fire. This is not such a nonsense, compared to what science draws to 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 sections of the forest of trees similar in age.

According to the testimony of experts, all our forests are burnt. It is the fires, in their opinion, that do not give the trees a chance to live to their natural age. Experts do not even admit the thought of a one-time destruction of huge areas of the forest, believing that such an event could not go unnoticed. In order to justify this ashes, mainstream science has adopted the theory of "random disturbance dynamics." This theory suggests that forest fires should be 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 a disaster.

We have to choose: either our eyes are deceiving us again, or some grandiose events of the 19th century with special impudence did not find their reflection in the official version of our past, as neither the Great Tartary nor the Great Northern Route got in there. Atlantis with the fallen moon did not fit. A one-time destruction of 200 … 400 million hectares of forest 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 grief of Belovezhskaya Pushcha about? Is it not about those grievous wounds of the earth that the young forest covers? After all, giant conflagrations do not happen by themselves …

Izhevsk