Why are all trees young in Russia, while trees in America are long-lived? But in Russia there is a lot of coal. Exposing an alternative story - why there are no old trees in the forests Forests on earth are no more than 200 years old

The videos of the group of history lovers caused a lot of controversy among the townspeople and experts. The questions they raise seem to lie on the surface, however, not only the townsfolk, but also recognized historians and local historians are driven into a stupor.

What has been wiped off the face of the earth?

One of the most controversial was the series of films "Disappeared Tyumen". In it, amateur local historians put forward a hypothesis that in the 18th century the regional capital was practically wiped off the face of the earth. In their opinion, then the West Siberian Plain was flooded, and the city literally disappeared. In favor of this they give several facts. For example, we do not have pine trees older than 150-200 years, and the soil under a small fertile layer contains a lot of sand and clay, which are considered alluvial rocks. It is under them that you can find the city that once disappeared. As another proof, the researchers cite the fact that there are no houses in Tyumen built before the 18th century.

Recognized researchers have also tried to find answers to these questions. So, Tyumen naturalist Pavel SITNIKOV noted that there are no old houses, since every hundred years the city sinks into the ground by about half a meter. This is partly due to weak soils, partly due to dust, including space dust, which settles between houses, but we simply do not notice it.

Another scientist, but already in the field of dendrochronology - Stanislav AREFIEV, professor, doctor of biological sciences, head of the biodiversity and dynamics sector natural complexes Institute for Research on the Development of the North of the Siberian Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences, explained that 200-400 years ago, trees in the south of the region were aging, as they are now, about twice as fast as in the north.

He confirmed that he really did not meet trees older than 250 years. The oldest pines, just about 250 years old - from 1770 - were noted by him in the Tarman swamps, near the village of Karaganda.

According to the scientist, this situation is primarily due to the fact that the regional capital is located near the southern border of the forest zone, where conditions for tree growth are not particularly favorable. The area as a whole is water-deficient, and some years and even entire periods over the past 400 years have been very dry.

The consequences of this were Forest fires and the invasion of forest pests, as a result of which the forest died over vast areas.

Lost 200 years

And history buffs have found quite a few such "blank spots" in the history of the city. Why, according to them, the entire past of the regional capital is one big mystery. You just need to look a little wider and more carefully ...

For example, in our city there are wooden houses with stone foundations, in which windows half stick out of the ground. Why is that? - asks a question Dmitry KONOVALOV, head of the creative association "Tur-A". - When you start looking for an answer, you understand that there is no information anywhere about this. It is known for sure that they did not sag, because this process would be uneven.

There is an assumption that there was a serious cataclysm, and a huge part of the house was destroyed. These buildings simply did not begin to be restored, and wooden houses were placed on a stone foundation.

Another question that has not yet been answered is Tyumen's birthday. The countdown has been going on since 1586 - then the city was allegedly founded. But this fact is not confirmed by anything. In fact, the regional capital is mentioned as early as 1375, and there is a stele hanging on the embankment, on which this date is indicated. And on the map of Anthony Jackinson (an English diplomat and traveler - Ed.), the city was marked as Great Tyumen back in 1542. Where did two hundred years of difference go? - amateur local historians are perplexed.

All materials and maps used by the guys are from open sources. These are not only history books, but publications such as the Vestnik geographical society», scientific works and even works of art.

Dostoevsky, Karamzin wrote a lot of interesting things about Siberia, including Tyumen. You can find many interesting facts in their works. We also use the work of our local historians. I have deep respect for Alexander Petrushin, but he has been studying the history of Tyumen since the beginning of the 20th century. He has a lot interesting facts, in the study of various topics, we often rely on his works, - says Dmitry.

However, by and large, those who are trying to find answers to the mysteries of the Tyumen history have no one to rely on. According to history lovers, the publications of local historians are based on the works of each other and they describe well-known facts.

Have you lost your mind?

In search of answers to curious, and sometimes "uncomfortable" questions for someone, the members of "Tour-A" faced misunderstanding and rejection rather than support. Convincing and well-founded arguments were not found by everyone, and many twisted their heads.

We do not argue with anyone, we only ask questions that we ourselves are trying to find the answer to, they start arguing with us. I had to hear that we went crazy, doing nonsense. But all the information that we have is available to anyone who wants to think and look at the history of the city more broadly than history textbooks offer, - emphasizes Dmitry. - Over time, there is less and less criticism of us, and the audience is becoming more and more interested in history. And this is probably the highest rating for us.
Every fact that the guys talk about in their stories is rechecked more than once and goes through a whole “examination”. Amateur local historians are advised by professional historians. But even some of their "blank spots" in the history of Tyumen lead to a stupor.

Common interest united people completely different professions- builders, lawyers, chemists, physicists, oil workers, military, former employees of internal affairs bodies, etc. According to them, they all have one goal in common: to preserve their roots and history.

Everyone has long known: without knowing the past, you can’t look into the future. The Internet space is full of various historical information. And it is not always clear whether it is true or not. Therefore, in our videos, we try to communicate with the viewer, we want to know his opinion about this or that information. How would we ask questions, which are always interesting to get answers, - says Dmitry Konovalov.

Videos about the mysteries of Tyumen can be found on the official channel of the creative team.

In the vast expanses of Russia - from St. Petersburg to Vladivostok - in a country where 1/5 of the planet's forests grow - an equally young forest grows. Do not find trees older than 150-200 years. Why?

We look at the data on the possible age of trees: European spruce - able to grow and live from 300 to 500 years. Pine ordinary from 300 to 600 years. Linden small-leaved from 300 to 600 years. Beech forest from 400 to 500 years. Cedar pine 400 to 1000 years. Larch up to 500 years. Siberian larch (Larix sibirica) up to 900 years. Common juniper (Juniperus communis) up to 1000 years. Yew berry (Taxus baccata) up to 2000 years. Pedunculate oak, up to 40 meters high, up to 1500 years old.

The photo shows a tree growing in California. The diameter of the trunk near the ground reaches 27 meters. The age is estimated at 2 thousand years. Well, even if it is less, the age of this tree is still more than 500 years for sure. So everything was fine in California, the next 500 - 2000 years :))

What happened to the nature of Russia 200 years ago? The phenomenon that "nullified" the Russian forest... Versions for reflection come as follows: 1. Forest fire. 2. Mass felling. 3. Another cataclysm.

Let's take a look at each version.

1. Version of the most powerful fire 200 years ago.

The forest area of ​​Russia today is 809 million hectares. http://geographyofrussia.com/les-rossii/ Annual fires, even very strong ones, burn up to 2 million hectares. What is less than 1% woodland. It is generally recognized that the human factor, that is, the presence of a person in the forest, who kindled a fire. Just like that - the forest does not burn.

The forest fires closest to us in time are the period of the summer of 2010, when all of Moscow was in smoke. What were these fires and what area did they cover?

"At the end of July, August and the beginning of September 2010 in Russia, throughout the entire territory of the first Central federal district, and then in other regions of Russia, a difficult fire situation arose due to abnormal HEAT and lack of precipitation. PEAT fires near Moscow were accompanied by the smell of burning and strong smoke in Moscow and in many other cities. As of the beginning of August 2010, about 200 thousand hectares in Russia were covered by fires in 20 regions (Central Russia and the Volga region, Dagestan). They write to us in a large and detailed article on Wikipedia.

Peat fires were recorded in the Moscow region, Sverdlovsk, Kirov, Tver, Kaluga and Pskov regions. The strongest fires were in the Ryazan and Nizhny Novgorod regions and Mordovia, where a real disaster actually occurred. A real disaster from just 200 thousand hectares of burning forest! Burning peat.

About peat.

In the 1920s, within the framework of the GOELRO plan, swamps in Central Russia were drained in order to extract peat, this was due to its greater availability and need as a fuel - compared to oil, gas and coal. In the 1970s-1980s, peat was mined for the needs Agriculture. The burning of dehydrated peatlands in the 2000s is the result of peat mining in the early 1920s. 200 years ago, peat extraction did not seem to be carried out. That is, the forest had more less reason burn.

The heat wave of 2010.

The abnormal heat wave of 2010 in Russia is a long period of abnormally hot weather in Russia in the last ten days of June - the first half of August 2010. It became one of the causes of massive fires, accompanied by unprecedented smog in a number of cities and regions. led to economic and environmental damage. In its scope, duration and degree of consequences, the heat had no analogues in more than a century of weather observations. The head of Roshydromet, Alexander Frolov, tells us a fairy tale that "based on the data of lake sediments, there has not been such a hot summer in Russia since the time of Rurik, that is, over the past more than 1000 years.!... "

Thereby public services they say that this heat was exceptionally rare.

This means that the consequences of the burnout of 200 thousand hectares in Central Russia are an exceptional rarity. There is some reasonableness in this statement, since a fire in which at least a third of the forests burned down central Russia- would cause such smoke, such carbon monoxide poisoning, such economic losses - in the form of thousands of burned villages, such human losses - that it would certainly be reflected in history. At least it's reasonable to assume.

So - a fire as a phenomenon, of course, is possible.

But it needs to be specially organized for large area, and the territory of Russia is very, very huge. Which means huge costs. And these arsonists need to be able to resist the rain - since rains in Russia in the summer are also an everyday reality. And a few hours of heavy rain will negate all the efforts of the arsonists.

2.Mass cutting version.

On an area of ​​800 million hectares - even with modern technology- benozipil, a very long and difficult event. Now all lumberjacks in Russia annually cut down about 2 million hectares of forest as much as possible. equipment is used for the removal of timber, ships for rafting it along rivers, cars and barges for transportation.

200 years ago, even if there were enough lumberjacks to cut down 1/100 of the country's forests, on an area of ​​8 million hectares (8 million lumberjacks), who and how could take out such volumes of forest and where to sell it. It is clear that it is not realistic to transport and use such volumes of forest by manual labor and on horseback.

3.A version of another cataclysm that was able to destroy all the forests. What could it be?

Earthquake? So we don't see them.

Flood? Where can you get enough water to flood an entire continent? And the mighty trees would have remained standing anyway. Or at least lay down. But such a flood would wash away all people.

In general, other cataclysms are not suitable. And even if they were suitable, then with their power of influence they would have to be reflected in the history of the country.

Conclusion. There is a fact of the absence of an adult forest. We have forests everywhere - young thickets. An explanation for this phenomenon remains to be found.

rev. dated 06.10.2014 - (photos added)

Most of our forests are young. Their age is from a quarter to a third of life. Apparently, in the 19th century, certain events took place that led to the almost total destruction of our forests. Our forests hold great secrets...

It was the wary attitude towards the statements of Alexei Kungurov about the Perm forests and clearings, at one of his conferences, that prompted me to conduct this study. Well, how! There was a mysterious hint of hundreds of kilometers of clearings in the forests and their age. I was personally hooked by the fact that I walk through 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 conducting 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.

The first amazing fact, which was confirmed - the dimension of the quarterly network. The quarterly network, by definition, is “The system of forest quarters created on the lands of the forest fund for the purpose of inventorying the forest fund, organizing and maintaining forestry and forest management”.

The quarterly network consists of quarterly glades. This is a straight strip freed from trees and shrubs (usually up to 4 m wide), laid in the forest in order to mark the boundaries of forest quarters. During forest inventory, cutting and clearing of a quarter clearing to a width of 0.5 m is carried out, and their expansion to 4 m is carried out in subsequent years by forestry workers.

For example, in the forests of Udmurtia, quarters have a rectangular shape, the width of 1 quarter is 1067 meters, or exactly 1 way verst. Until that moment, I was firmly convinced that all these forest roads the work of Soviet foresters. But what the hell did they need to mark out the quarterly network in versts?

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

Today, there are already machines for clearing clearings, but they should be forgotten, since almost the entire forest fund of the European part of Russia, plus part of the forest beyond the Urals, approximately to Tyumen, is divided into a verst block network. Of course, there is also a kilometer, because in the last century the foresters also did something, but mostly it was a verst. In particular, there are no kilometer clearings in Udmurtia. And this means that the project and 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 that the metric system of measures was adopted for mandatory use in Russia, and the verst gave way to the kilometer.

It turns out that it was made with axes and jigsaws, if, of course, we 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. During the day, he will be able to clear an average of no more than 10 meters of clearing. 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 create our excellent verst block network for at least 80 years.

But there has never been such a number of workers involved in forest management. According to 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 expenses. Even if we imagine that for this they drove peasants from the surrounding villages to do free work, it is still not clear who did this in the sparsely populated areas of the Perm, Kirov, and Vologda regions.

After this fact, it is no longer so surprising that the entire block network is tilted by about 10 degrees and is not directed to the geographic North Pole, but, apparently, on a magnetic one (the markings were made according to the compass, and not according to GPS navigator), which was supposed to be at that time located about 1000 kilometers towards 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 frightening that even today the compass needle points in approximately the same direction in which the quarterly network was made before 1918. It still can't be! All logic falls apart.

But it is. 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 complete audit takes place every 20 years. If it passes at all. And during this period of time, the “forest user” should monitor the clearings. Well, if in Soviet times someone followed, then over the past 20 years it is unlikely. But the clearings are not overgrown. There is a windbreak, but there are no trees in the middle of the road. But in 20 years, a pine seed that accidentally fell to the ground, of which billions are sown annually, grows up to 8 meters in height. Not only are the clearings not overgrown, you will not even see stumps from periodic clearings. This is all the more striking in comparison with power lines, which special brigades cleared of grown shrubs and trees regularly.

This is what typical clearings in our forests look like. Grass, sometimes bushes, but no trees. There are no signs of regular maintenance.

The second big mystery is the age of our forest, or the trees in that forest. In general, let's go in order.

First, let's figure out how long a tree lives. Here is the relevant table.

AT different sources The numbers are slightly different, but not significantly. Pine and spruce should 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 thicker than 80 cm. They are not in the mass. There are piece specimens (in Udmurtia - 2 pines) that reach 1.2 m, but their age is also not more than 200 years.

On Wheeler Peak (4011 m above sea level), New Mexico, bristlecone pines grow, one of the most long-lived trees on the ground. The age of the oldest specimens is estimated at 4,700 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 has not been cut down. He has distinguishing feature– low crown density from 10 to 40%. That is, some trees were already old and tall, but some of them fell down affected by a fungus or died, losing competition with their neighbors for water, soil and light. Large gaps form 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 actively begins to grow up. Therefore, the natural forest consists of different generations, and crown density is the main indicator of this.

But if the forest was subjected to clear-cutting, then new trees grow simultaneously for a long time, crown density is high, more than 40%. Several centuries will pass, and if the forest is not touched, then the struggle for a place under the sun will do its job. It will become natural again. Do you want to know how much natural forest in our country that is not affected by anything? Look at the map of Russian forests.

The bright colors indicate forests with high canopy density, i.e. they are not “natural forests”. And most of them are. All European part denoted by saturated blue color. This is, as indicated in the table: “Small-leaved and mixed forests. Forests with a predominance of birch, aspen, gray alder, often with an admixture coniferous trees or with individual sections coniferous forests. Almost all of them are derived forests that have formed on the site of primary forests as a result of logging, clearing, and forest fires.”

On the mountains and the tundra zone, you can not stop, there the rarity of the crowns may be due to other reasons. But the plains and middle lane covers a clearly young forest. How young? Come down and check. It is unlikely that you will find a tree older than 150 years in the forest. Even a standard drill for determining the age of a tree has a length of 36 cm 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. European Russia. Moreover: forest fires in the taiga are so common that some researchers consider the taiga as a lot of fires. different ages- more precisely, a lot of forests that have formed on these burned areas. Many researchers believe that forest fires are, if not the only, then at least the main natural mechanism for forest renewal, the replacement of old generations of trees with young ones ... "

All this is called "the dynamics of random disturbances." That's where the dog is buried. The forest burned, and burned almost everywhere. And this, according to experts, main reason small age of our forests. Not fungus, not bugs, not hurricanes. Our entire taiga stands on fire, and after a fire, the same thing remains as after clear-cutting. Hence the high density of crowns in almost the entire forest zone. Of course, there are exceptions - really untouched forests in the Angara region, on Valaam and, probably, somewhere else in the expanses of our vast Motherland. It's really fabulous big trees in its mass. And although these are small islands in the boundless sea of ​​the taiga, they prove that the forest can be like that.

What is so common in forest fires that they have 150…200 years burned the entire forest in 700 million hectares? Moreover, according to scientists, in a certain checkerboard pattern, 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 fires, which have so rejuvenated our forests, occurred over a period of no more than 100 years. Translating into dates, for the 19th century alone. For this, it was necessary to burn 7 million hectares of forest annually.

Even as a result of large-scale forest fires in the summer of 2010, which all experts called catastrophic in terms of volume, only 2 million hectares burned down. It turns out that there is nothing "so ordinary" in this. The last justification for such a burned 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 was not developed? In particular, in Perm region? Moreover, this method of farming involves the labor-intensive cultural use of limited areas of the forest, and not at all unrestrained arson of large areas in the hot summer season, but with a breeze.

Going through everything possible options, we can say with confidence that the scientific concept of "the dynamics of random disturbances" is nothing in real life is not substantiated, and is a myth intended to mask the inadequate state of the current forests of Russia, and hence the events that led to it.

We will have to admit that our forests either burned intensively (beyond any norm) and constantly burned throughout the 19th century (which in itself is inexplicable and is not recorded anywhere), or burned down at a time as a result of some incident, which is why it is violently denied scientific world, having no arguments other than that in official history nothing of the kind is recorded.

To all this, one can add that there were clearly fabulously large trees in the old natural forests. It has already been said about the reserved surviving areas of the taiga. It is worth giving an example in part deciduous forests. AT Nizhny Novgorod region and in Chuvashia very favorable climate for deciduous trees. There are a lot of oak trees growing there. But you, again, will not find old copies. The same 150 years old, no older. Older single copies are all over the place. Here is a photo of the largest oak tree in Belarus. It grows in Belovezhskaya Pushcha. Its diameter is about 2 meters, and its age is estimated at 800 years, which, of course, is very conditional. 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, he is 430 years old.

A special theme is bog oak. This is the one that is extracted mainly from the bottom of the rivers. My relatives from Chuvashia told me that they pulled huge specimens up to 1.5 m in diameter from the bottom. And there were many. This indicates the composition of the former oak forest, the remains of which lie at the bottom. In the Gomel region there is the river Besed, the bottom of which is dotted with bog oak, although now there are only water meadows and fields around. This means that nothing prevents the current oaks 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 as a result of this study. There are a lot of contradictions between the reality that we observe with our own eyes and the official interpretation of the relatively recent past:

- there is a developed quarterly network over a vast 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 create it for 80 years. Clearings are serviced very irregularly, if at all, but they do not overgrow.

- on the other hand, according to historians and 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 a similar amount of free labor. There was no mechanization capable of facilitating these works.

It is required 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.

There could also be less labor-intensive, efficient technologies for laying and maintaining clearings that have been lost today (some distant analogue of herbicides). It is probably foolish to say that Russia has not lost anything after 1917. Finally, perhaps, they did not cut through the clearings, but in the spaces destroyed by the fire, trees were planted in quarters. This is not such nonsense, compared to what science draws us. Though 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 the forests of Russia 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 from trees of similar age.

According to experts, all our forests are burned out. 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 allow the thought of the simultaneous destruction of vast expanses of forest, believing that such an event could not go unnoticed. In order to justify this ashes, official science has adopted the theory of "the dynamics of random disturbances." This theory proposes that forest fires are commonplace, 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.

It is required to choose: either our eyes are deceiving us again, or some grandiose events of the 19th century with particular impudence were not reflected in the official version of our past, as neither the Great Tartaria nor the Great Northern Way. Atlantis with the fallen moon didn't even fit. The one-time destruction of 200...400 million hectares of forest is even easier to imagine, and to hide, than the unquenchable, 100-year-old fire proposed for consideration by science.

So what is the age-old sadness of Belovezhskaya Pushcha about? Is it not about those heavy wounds of the earth that the young forest covers? After all, giant conflagrations do not happen by themselves ...

basis: article by A. Artemiev
photo by alexfl

Old women on the Volga

Torzhok

Mozhaisk

Suzdal, r. Kamenka

Vladimir

Surprising as it may sound, not only cities, but also suburban landscapes are overgrown.

source of the Volga

R. Koloch near Borodino

environs of Pereslavl-Zalessky

In Russia, the Council for the Conservation natural heritage nation in the Federation Council of the Federal Assembly of the Russian Federation, the program "Trees - Monuments of Wildlife" was opened. Enthusiasts all over the country are looking for trees 200 years old and older with fire during the day. Two hundred years old trees are unique! So far, about 200 pieces of all breeds and varieties have been found throughout the country. Moreover, most of the trees found have nothing to do with the forest, like this 360-year-old pine. This is determined not only by its modern proud loneliness, but also by the shape of the crown.

Thanks to this program, we are able to fairly objectively assess the age of our forests.
Here are two examples of applications from the Kurgan region.

This, on this moment, the oldest tree in the Kurgan region, whose age is set by experts at 189 years old - a little less than 200 years old. Pine grows in the Ozerninsky forest near the sanatorium "Pine Grove". And the forest itself, of course, is much younger: the patrirah pine grew long years alone, as can be seen from the shape of the crown of the tree.
Another application was received from the Kurgan region, claiming a pine tree older than 200 years:

This tree ended up on the territory of the arboretum - it was preserved along with some others native species growing in this area before the laying of the arboretum. The arboretum was founded during the organization of a forest nursery for the Forest School, established in 1893. The forest school and forest nursery were necessary for the training of forestry specialists who were to carry out work on the allocation and evaluation of forests during the construction of the Kurgan section of the Trans-Siberian railway at the end of the 19th century.
Let's note: the forest school and forest nursery were founded about 120 years ago and their purpose was to evaluate forest lands that already existed by that time.
These two trees grow in the Kurgan region, this is the south of Western Siberia - it borders on the Chelyabinsk, Tyumen, Omsk regions, and in the south - on Kazakhstan.
Let us pay attention: both trees began their lives not in the forest, but in an open field - this is evidenced by the shape of their crown and the presence of branches coming almost from the very base. The pines that grow in the forest are a bare, straight whip, "no hitch without a hitch" with a panicle on top, like this group of pines on the left side of the picture:

Here it is, smooth as a string, without knots, the trunk of a pine tree that has grown next to other pine trees:

Yes, these pines grew in the middle of the forest, which was here until the early 60s of the last century, before a sand pit was organized here, from which sand was washed with a dredger onto the highway under construction, which is now called "Baikal". This place is located one kilometer from the northern outskirts of Kurgan.
And now let's make a sortie into the Kurgan forest and look at the terrain of the "arrangement" of a typical West Siberian forest. Let's move away from the lake for a kilometer into the thick of the "ancient" forest.
In the forest, you constantly come across such trees as this pine in the center:

This is not a dried tree, its crown is full of life:

This is an old tree that began its life in an open field, then other pines began to grow around and the branches began to dry from below, the same tree can be seen in the background on the left in the frame.

The girth of the trunk at the chest level of an adult is 230 centimeters, i.e. the diameter of the trunk is about 75 centimeters. For a pine, this is a solid size, so with a trunk thickness of 92 cm, the age of the tree in the next picture was set at 426 years old

But in the Kurgan region, perhaps, more favorable conditions for pines - the pine from the Ozerninsky forest, which was discussed above, has a trunk thickness of 110 centimeters and an age of only 189 years. I also found several freshly cut stumps, also about 70 cm in diameter, and counted 130 annual rings. Those. the pines from which the forest began are about 130-150 years old.
If things continue to be the same as they have been for the last 150 years - the forests will grow and gain strength - then it is not difficult to predict how the children from these photographs will see this forest in 50-60 years, when they bring their grandchildren to these, for example, pine trees (fragment photograph placed above - pines by the lake).

You understand: pine trees at 200 years old will cease to be a rarity, in the Kurgan region alone there will be unmeasured, pine trees over 150 years old, grown among pine forests, with a trunk as smooth as a telegraph pole without knots, will grow everywhere, but now there are none at all, that is, no at all.
Of the entire mass of monumental pines, I found only one that grew in the forest, in the Khanty-Mansiysk Okrug:

Given the harsh climate of those places (equated to areas Far North), with a trunk thickness of 66 cm, it is fair to consider this tree much older than 200 years. At the same time, the applicants noted that this pine is a rarity for local forests. And in the local forests, with an area of ​​at least 54 thousand hectares, there is nothing like this! There are forests, but the forest in which this pine was born has disappeared somewhere - after all, it has grown and stretched among the pines that were even older. But they are not.
And this is what will prevent those pines that grow, at least in the Kurgan forests, from continuing their lives - pines live and for 400 years, as we have seen, our conditions for them are ideal. Pine trees are very resistant to diseases, and with age, resistance only increases, fires for pine trees are not terrible - there is nothing to burn down there, ground fires of pine trees are easily tolerated, and riding ones, after all, are very rare. And, again, adult pines are more resistant to fires, so fires destroy, first of all, young growth.
Anyone, after the above, will argue with the statement that we did not have forests 150 years ago at all? There was a desert, like the Sahara - bare sand:

This is a fire pit. What we see: the forest stands on bare sand, covered only with needles with cones and a thin layer of humus - just a few centimeters. All pine forests in our country, and, as far as I know, in the Tyumen region, stand on such bare sand. These are hundreds of thousands of hectares of forest, if not millions - if this is so, then the Sahara is resting! And all this was literally a hundred and fifty years ago!
The sand is blindingly white, with no impurities at all!
And it seems that you can meet such sands not only in the West Siberian Lowland. For example, there is something similar in Transbaikalia - there is a small area, only five by ten kilometers, which is still "undeveloped" taiga, and the locals consider it a "Miracle of Nature".

And he was given the status of a geological reserve. We have this "miracle" - well, heaps, only this wood, in which we had an excursion, has dimensions of 50 by 60 kilometers, and no one sees any miracles and does not organize reserves - as if it should be so ...
By the way, the fact that Transbaikalia was a continuous desert in the 19th century was documented by photographers of that time, I already laid out what those places looked like before the construction of the Circum-Baikal Railway. Here, for example:

A similar picture can be seen in other Siberian places, for example, a view in the "deaf taiga" at the construction of the road to Tomsk:

All of the above convincingly proves that about 150-200 years ago there were practically no forests in Russia. The question arises: were there forests in Russia before. Were! It's just that for one reason or another they were buried by the "cultural layer", like the first floors of the St. Petersburg Hermitage, the first floors in many Russian cities.
I have repeatedly written about this very "cultural layer" here, but I will not be able to resist once again publishing a photo that has recently spread around the Internet:

It seems that in Kazan the "cultural layer" from the first floor, which for many years was considered a "basement" was stupidly removed by a bulldozer, without resorting to the services of archaeologists.
But bog oak, and even more so, is mined without notifying any "scientists" - "historians" and other archaeologists. Yes, such a business still exists - the extraction of fossil oak:

But the next picture was taken in central Russia - here the river washes away the coast and centuries-old oaks, uprooted at one time, are born:

The author of the photo writes that the oaks are straight and slender, which indicates that they grew in the forest. And the age, with that thickness (the case for the scale is 11 cm) is much older than 200 years.
And again, as Newton said, I do not invent hypotheses: let the "historians" explain why trees older than 150 years are massively found only under the "cultural layer".

http://rosdrevo.ru/ - All-Russian program "Trees - monuments of wildlife"

Http://www.clumba.su/mne-ponyatna-tvoya-vekovaya-pechal/ - I understand your age-old sadness...

Http://sibved.livejournal.com/153207.html - Overgrowing Russia

Http://www.clumba.su/kulturnye-sloi-evrazii/ - about "cultural layers"

Http://vvdom.livejournal.com/332212.html - "Cultural layers" of St. Petersburg

Http://sibved.livejournal.com/150384.html - Chara Desert

Http://humus.livejournal.com/2882049.html - Road construction work. Tomsk region. 1909 Part 1

Http://rosdrevo.ru/index.php?option=com_adsmanager&page=show_ad&adid=77&catid=1&Itemid=85 - pine tree in the Ozerninsky forest in the Kurgan region

Http://www.bogoak.biz/ - bog oak mining

Http://sibved.livejournal.com/167844.html - oaks under clay

Http://sibved.livejournal.com/167844.html?thread=4458660#t4458660 - oak trees in Sharovsky Park

Http://sibved.livejournal.com/159295.html - Krasnoyarsk in the past

Http://sibved.livejournal.com/73000.html - Siberia during the development

Http://www.skyscrapercity.com/showthread.php?s=bbcef0f3187e3211e4f2690c6548c4ef&t=1484553 - photo of old Krasnoyarsk

Http://rosdrevo.ru/index.php?option=com_adsmanager&page=show_ad&adid=79&catid=1&Itemid=85 - pine tree planted in the arboretum at the forest nursery on Prosvet in the Kurgan region

Http://rosdrevo.ru/index.php?option=com_adsmanager&page=show_ad&adid=67&catid=1&Itemid=85 - 400 lazy pine near Tobolsk

Http://rosdrevo.ru/index.php?option=com_adsmanager&page=show_ad&adid=95&catid=1&Itemid=85 - pine tree from Buzuluksky Bor National Park

Http://gorodskoyportal.ru/peterburg/blog/4346102/ - The oldest tree in St. Petersburg.

Http://sibved.livejournal.com/47355.html - 5000-year-old forest unearthed by storms

http://nashaplaneta.su/news/chto_ot_nas_skryvajut_pochemu_derevja_starshe_150_200_let_vstrechajutsja_tolko_pod_kulturnym_sloem/2016-11-27-35423

Why in Russia all the trees are very young and in Siberia average age trees are only 150 years old, in America there are huge sequoias that are 2000 years old or more. Why such a huge difference? And why do we have coal in Russia and not in America?

stone forest

A pine tree lives 400 years and individual specimens in Siberia reach a little more and die, pine trees rarely survive longer, because now in Siberia it is very harsh conditions. But in Kemerovo, coal is mined in mines. Where did this Coal come from, which warms us, if not from pressed ancient huge trees, which for some reason mysteriously disappeared from us?

How was coal formed? This question will not be answered by any academician, let alone the Internet. Coal was formed only in a layer of 5-7 meters from old tree species, compressed and turned into coal - compressed forest. Some kind of plate fell from above and pressed it, heating them at the same time. What force lifted hundreds of tons of rocks into the air and covered these trees from above, if you need to go down into the mine quite deep? What is the origin of coal? Where did all our sequoias go, like in America? They obviously were! We apparently have compressed coal from these sequoias. But there is no coal in America, because there was a more favorable climate and all the Sequoias survived.

Maybe it's because of the Tunguska meteorite? The Tunguska meteorite fell on June 30, 1908 in the area of ​​the Podkamennaya Tunguska River, an event called the "Tunguska phenomenon" happened at 4 o'clock in the morning. But, if the Tunguska meteorite exploded during its passage over Europe, then its explosion would be capable of completely destroying a city like St. Petersburg. Thank God that this did not happen, but something happened, because there is no forest in St. Petersburg - everywhere young growth and the most ancient trees were clearly planted intentionally near the Peter and Paul Fortress - there were also a 300-year-old oak and linden
and Oranienbaum, ancient trees remain, but all the trees around are relatively young. No wonder they say that there was some unthinkable cataclysm in Nature in 1812-1814, and Napoleon lost to the Russians, because he froze in Russia.

The tree-ring method reflects the consequences of all major volcanic eruptions extremely poorly - the eruption of a tropical volcano in the territory of modern Mexico or Ecuador in 1258, the underwater volcano Kuwae in the vicinity of the Pacific islands of Vanuatu in 1458, the mysterious eruption of 1809 and the explosion of the Tambora volcano on the Indonesian island of Sumbawa in 1815.

What kind of cold was it then? In 1812, when Napoleon went to Russia, he was stopped by the Russian Frost and Hitler was also stopped by the Russian frost. Just Santa Claus - Russian bodyguard. But I have a question: Where does this frost come from at the right time, in the right place and where did permafrost in Siberia, when it used to be warm in Russia, is Russia the birthplace of elephants?

Everyone remembers the Palms in Astrakhan Strays, Jan Jansen:

17th century engraving from a book by Jan Streis. The excesses of the Cossacks of Stepan Razin in the captured Astrakhan.

Orange trees grew in St. Petersburg in Oranienbaum Lomonosov near St. Petersburg - this is the Orange City - On all the ancient engravings of the city - rows of orange trees, moreover, right in the ground, and not in the greenhouse.

Oranienbaum. Engraving by A.I. Rostovtsev, 1716

Oranienbaum. Engraving by A.I. Rostovtsev, 1716. Sailboats went straight to the palace, which already stood in 1716. Oraniybaum where at open field oranges grew before. #Peter #Lomonosov

Engraving. Grand Palace Oranienbaum. Middle of the 18th century.

Engraving. Grand Palace Oranienbaum. Middle of the 18th century.

Trees are very sensitive to the slightest changes in climatic conditions - an increase or decrease in temperature, energy solar radiation and other factors. All these events are reflected in the shape and thickness of annual rings - layers of wood in the trunk, which is formed during the growing season. It is believed that dark rings correspond to unfavorable environmental conditions, and light rings correspond to favorable ones. and now, when trees are cut down, our entire core is completely dark - these were not favorable years for the growth of trees.

Michael Mann (Michael Mann) from the University of Pennsylvania at State College (USA) and his colleagues checked how accurately annual rings reflect the short-term temperature drop that occurs after the strongest tropical volcanic eruptions.

To do this, Mann and his colleagues compared graphs of seasonal temperature fluctuations from 1200 to the present, which were obtained using a "conventional" climate model and a technique that included analysis of tree growth rings. traditional model monitors changes in the intensity of solar radiation and fluctuations in the energy balance of the planet, which is reflected in the increase or decrease in average temperatures.

The second technique used, as input data, sections of trunks obtained in 60 high-mountain forest areas on the so-called "tree line" - maximum height on which they can grow ordinary trees. Local climatic conditions only minimally meet the needs woody vegetation, and abnormally high or low average annual temperatures well reflected in the rings.

Because of this, slices can accumulate chronological errors as they move from relatively modern rings to the older ones."

And you know. What I think is easy in Russia because of the anomalous low temperatures our forest just didn't grow. And the dark cores of the trees are proof of this. Ice Age affected our trees.

The truth is somewhere near.