Russian forest sequesters substantially more carbon than previously reported

Since the collapse of the Soviet Union and transition to a new forest inventory system, Russia has reported almost no change in growing stock (+ 1.8%) and biomass (+ 0.6%). Yet remote sensing products indicate increased vegetation productivity, tree cover and above-ground biomass. Here, we challenge...

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Published in:Scientific reports Vol. 11; no. 1; pp. 12825 - 7
Main Authors: Schepaschenko, Dmitry, Moltchanova, Elena, Fedorov, Stanislav, Karminov, Victor, Ontikov, Petr, Santoro, Maurizio, See, Linda, Kositsyn, Vladimir, Shvidenko, Anatoly, Romanovskaya, Anna, Korotkov, Vladimir, Lesiv, Myroslava, Bartalev, Sergey, Fritz, Steffen, Shchepashchenko, Maria, Kraxner, Florian
Format: Journal Article
Language:English
Published: London Nature Publishing Group UK 17.06.2021
Nature Publishing Group
Nature Portfolio
Subjects:
631/158/1145
631/158/2454
704/106/694/2739
Biomass
Forest management
Forests
Greenhouse gases
Humanities and Social Sciences
multidisciplinary
National forests
Remote sensing
Science
Science (multidisciplinary)
Union of Soviet Socialist Republics > USSR
Russia
ISSN:2045-2322, 2045-2322
Online Access:Get full text
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Summary:Since the collapse of the Soviet Union and transition to a new forest inventory system, Russia has reported almost no change in growing stock (+ 1.8%) and biomass (+ 0.6%). Yet remote sensing products indicate increased vegetation productivity, tree cover and above-ground biomass. Here, we challenge these statistics with a combination of recent National Forest Inventory and remote sensing data to provide an alternative estimate of the growing stock of Russian forests and to assess the relative changes in post-Soviet Russia. Our estimate for the year 2014 is 111 ± 1.3 × 10 9 m 3 , or 39% higher than the value in the State Forest Register. Using the last Soviet Union report as a reference, Russian forests have accumulated 1163 × 10 6 m 3  yr -1 of growing stock between 1988–2014, which balances the net forest stock losses in tropical countries. Our estimate of the growing stock of managed forests is 94.2 × 10 9 m 3 , which corresponds to sequestration of 354 Tg C yr -1 in live biomass over 1988–2014, or 47% higher than reported in the National Greenhouse Gases Inventory.
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ISSN:2045-2322
2045-2322
DOI:10.1038/s41598-021-92152-9