Russian forest sequesters substantially more carbon than previously reported
Dmitry Schepaschenko, Elena Moltchanova, Stanislav Fedorov, Victor Karminov, Petr Ontikov, Maurizio Santoro, Linda See, В.Н. Косицын, А. Shvidenko, A. A. Romanovskaya, В. Н. Коротков, Myroslava Lesiv, С.А. Барталев, Steffen Fritz, Maria Shchepashchenko, Florian Kraxner
Abstract
Abstract 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.