Why are all trees young in Russia, while trees in America are long-lived? But in Russia there is a lot of coal. And the forest is mysterious How many trees in Russia are older than 200 years

Another notch to remember. Is everything honestly and objectively stated in official history?

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

It was precisely 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 modern " Instructions for conducting forest management in the forest fund of Russia". This did not add clarity, rather the opposite. But there was confidence that things are not clean here.

The first amazing fact, which was confirmed - dimension quarter 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.

Fig.2

In the picture you can see how these clearings look in Udmurtia. The picture was taken from the program " Google Earth» ( see Fig.2). The quarters are rectangular. For measurement accuracy, a segment of 5 blocks wide is marked. It amounted to 5340 m, which means that the width of 1 quarter is 1067 meters, or exactly 1 track verst. The quality of the picture leaves much to be desired, but I myself constantly walk along these clearings, and I know well what you see from above from the ground. Until that moment, I was firmly convinced that all these forest roads the work of Soviet foresters. But why the hell did they need to mark 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.

Fig.3

Today, clearing machines already exist (see Fig. Fig.3), 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 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 winter time. 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, and, apparently, on the magnetic ( markings were made by compass, not by GPS navigator ), which was supposed to be at that time located about 1000 kilometers towards Kamchatka. And not so embarrassing that magnetic pole, according to 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 time someone followed, then over the past 20 years is unlikely. But the clearings were 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.

Fig.4

This is what typical clearings in our forests look like. Grass, sometimes bushes, but no trees. There are no signs of regular care (see photo). Fig.4 and Fig.5).

Fig.5

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.

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

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 copies (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 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 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 for a long time grow at the same 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? Please, a map of the forests of Russia (see. Fig.6).

Fig.6

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 are derivative forests formed on the site of primary forests as a result of logging, clearing, 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 clearly a 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. Furthermore: 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 by young ones.…»

All this is called 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 over the past 150 ... 200 years they have burned the entire forest area of ​​​​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 annually 7 million hectares of forest.

Even as a result of large-scale forest fires in the summer of 2010, which all experts called catastrophic in size, burned down only 2 million hectares. Turns out nothing so ordinary' is not 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, it can be said with certainty that the scientific concept of " dynamics of random disturbances» 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 are either heavily ( beyond the norm) and constantly burned throughout the 19th century ( which in itself is inexplicable and nowhere recorded), or burned out at a time as a result of some incident, from which he violently denies scientific world, having no arguments other than that in official no such thing is recorded in history.

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 terms of deciduous forests. AT Nizhny Novgorod region and Chuvashia has a 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. 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 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 (see. Fig.7).

Fig.7

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 (cf. 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 oaks from growing to such sizes. What, 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.

Fig.8

Let's summarize what we got as a result of this research. 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 such an amount of free work force. 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. For what interesting could this steam engine from the movie " Siberian barber" (cm. Fig.9). Or is Mikhalkov a completely unthinkable dreamer?

Fig.9

There could also be less labor-intensive, efficient technologies for laying and maintaining glades 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 " dynamics of random disturbances". This theory suggests that forest fires that destroy ( according to some strange schedule) up to 7 million hectares of forest per year, although in 2010 even 2 million hectares, destroyed as a result of deliberate arson of the forest, 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 it did not fit there nor Great Tartaria, nor Great Northern Way . Atlantis with fallen moon and they didn't fit. One Time Destruction 200…400 million hectares it is even easier to imagine forests, and even to hide them, 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 by themselves don't happen...

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, oldest tree in the Kurgan region, whose age is set by experts at 189 years old, it is a little short of 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 supposed 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 Western Siberia- borders on the Chelyabinsk, Tyumen, Omsk regions, and in the south - on Kazakhstan.
Let's 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 by experts at 426 years

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 in the same way as 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 disappeared somewhere - after all, it grew 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 here, and, as far as I know, in the Tyumen region, they 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 conducted 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" on 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:

Here is the next picture taken in central Russia- here the river washes away the shore 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".

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 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 anomalous heat and lack of precipitation. PEAT fires in the Moscow region 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 even less reason to 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 was unparalleled 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 of central Russia burned down would cause such smoke, such carbon monoxide poisoning, such economic losses - in the form of thousands of burnt villages, such human losses - that this 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 trees are mighty, they would still stand. 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.

It was precisely 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. However, there was confidence that it's dirty here.
The first amazing fact, which was confirmed - dimension of the quarter 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.
In the picture you can see how these clearings look in Udmurtia. The picture was taken from the program "Google Earth"(see Fig.2). The quarters are rectangular. For measurement accuracy, a segment of 5 blocks wide is marked. She made 5340 m, which means that the width of 1 quarter is 1067 meters, or exactly 1 track verst. The quality of the picture leaves much to be desired, but I myself constantly walk along these clearings, and I know well what you see from above from the ground. Until that moment, I was firmly convinced that all these forest roads were the work of Soviet foresters. But what the hell did they need mark 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 (see Fig. 3), 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 made with axes and jigsaws if, of course, we understand historical reality correctly. 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 quarterly network is inclined by about 10 degrees and is directed not to the geographic north pole, but, apparently, to magnetic(marking was carried out using a compass, and not a GPS navigator), which should have been located at that time 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 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 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 are regularly cleared by special teams from overgrown shrubs and trees.
This is what typical clearings in our forests look like. Grass, sometimes 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 trees in this forest. In general, let's go in order. First, let's figure out how long a tree lives. Here is the relevant table.

In different sources, the numbers differ slightly, but not significantly. Pine and spruce should survive under normal conditions 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 copies ( 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 "natural forest". This is a forest that lives its own life - it has not been 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 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 at the same time for a long time, crown density is high, over 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? Please, a map of Russian forests (see Fig.6).
The bright colors indicate forests with high canopy density, i.e. they are not “natural forests”. And most of them are. The entire European part is marked in deep blue. This is as stated 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 derived forests that have formed on the site of primary forests as a result of logging, clearing, 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 it covers the plains and the middle lane clearly a 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 the standard drill for determining the age of a tree is 36 cm long and is designed for a tree 130 years old. How does this explain forest science? 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 multitude of burnt areas of different ages - more precisely, a multitude of forests formed on these burnt 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. That's where the dog is buried. The forest was on fire, 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. Our entire taiga stands on fire, and after a fire, the same thing remains as after clear-cutting. From here high crown density almost throughout 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. There are really fabulous big trees. in its mass. And although these are small islands in the boundless sea of ​​the taiga, they prove that forest can be.
What is so common in forest fires that over the past 150 ... 200 years they have burned the entire forest area of ​​​​700 million hectares? Moreover, according to scientists, in some checkerboard pattern respecting the sequence, 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 forests is at least 100 years old, suggests that large-scale fires, which so rejuvenated our forests, occurred over a period of no more than 100 years. Translating to dates, for one only 19th century. For this it was necessary 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. 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 the 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.
Having gone through all the possible options, it is safe to say that scientific concept "dynamics of random disturbances" nothing in real life not justified, and is myth, designed to mask the inadequate state of the current forests of Russia, and hence events leading to this.
We will have to admit that our forests either burned heavily (beyond the norm) and constantly burned throughout the 19th century (which in itself is inexplicable and is not recorded anywhere), or burned down at the same time as a result some incident, which is why the scientific world furiously denies it, having no arguments, except that nothing of the kind is recorded in the official history.
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 terms of deciduous forests. The Nizhny Novgorod region and Chuvashia have a 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. There is a photo at the beginning of the article 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 highly 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, he 430 years(see Fig.7).
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(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 oaks from growing to such sizes. What, before "dynamics of random disturbances" in the form of thunderstorms and lightning worked somehow in a special way? No, everything was the same. And so it turns out that the current forest has not yet reached maturity.
Let's summarize what we got as a result of this research. 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 on a huge space, 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 deceive us, or The 19th century was not like that at all as historians tell us. In particular, there could be mechanization, commensurate with the tasks described (What could this steam engine from the film “The Barber of Siberia” be intended for (see Fig. 9). Or is Mikhalkov a completely unthinkable dreamer?).
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 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, 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 considered 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 named catastrophe.
You need to choose: or our eyes deceive us again, or some great events of the 19th century with particular impudence did not find their reflection in the official version of our past, no matter how

Some time ago, I wondered why there are no thousand-year-old sorcerer oaks in our forests, the images of which so vividly emerge from our genetic memory when we read the ones that have come down to us. folk tales. Where are those dense forests that we all imagine so well? Let us recall the lines of V.S. Vysotsky, and these same thickets immediately appear before your eyes:

In reserved and dense scary Murom forests
Any evil spirits wanders in a cloud and sows fear in passers-by,
Howling howling that your dead,
If there are nightingales there, then robbers.
Scary, creepy!

In the enchanted swamps there kikimors live,
They will tickle you to hiccups and drag you to the bottom.
Whether you are on foot, whether you are on horseback, they grab
And the goblin so roam the forest.
Scary, creepy!

And a peasant, a merchant and a warrior fell into a dense forest,
Who for what: who with a drink, and who foolishly climbed into the thicket.
For a reason they disappeared, for no reason,
Only all of them were seen, as if they had disappeared.
Scary, creepy!

Something similar appears in the well-known song about hares:

In the dark blue forest, where aspens tremble,
Where the leaves fall from the sorcerer oaks
Hares mowed grass in the clearing at midnight
And at the same time they sang strange words:

We have a business - in the most terrible hour we mow the magic tryn-grass "

And the sorcerer oaks whisper something in the fog,
At the filthy swamps, someone's shadows rise,
Hares mow grass, tryn-grass in a clearing
And out of fear, they sing a song faster and faster:

“But we don’t care, but we don’t care, even if we are afraid of the wolf and the owl,
We have a business - in the most terrible hour we mow the magic tryn-grass "

In general, I plunged into this topic, and it turned out that I was not the only one who asked this question. I discovered many interesting theories, ranging from continental floods to a nuclear war in 1812 unleashed by alien invaders. In general, I had fun))) And meanwhile, a fact is a fact - in the first old photos of construction railways and other objects in the vastness of Russia there are no old forests! There is a young forest, which is much younger than that what we see around today. Even the photo from the site of the "Tunguska meteorite" does not impress with the thickness of the trunks. There are thin as matches trunks of approximately the same thickness. No oak witches for you. At the same time, in some European countries and America with oaks and other trees (for example, sequoias) everything is in order ...

The official version claims that the forests do not live up to their mature age due to periodic fires that occur here and there throughout Siberia. But it is still strange that throughout Russia there was no photograph with a really dense forest, with a thousand-year-old oak forest (and oaks live for 1500 years). In addition, from the photographs, one gets the feeling that the forests are all about the same age, which, in theory, should not be in the case of periodic relatively local fires.

Despite my suspicions, I admit that the age of the already grown forest is difficult to determine from photographs. We distinguish only the forest from the young growth, and when it is already more than 40 years old, then without a specific measurement of the diameters of the trunks, the fig knows how old it is, 50, 80 or 100. And from here we can assume that any forest in Siberia burns more often than once every 150-200 years. But in the west of the Moscow region, there have been no large forest fires for a long time.

Consider the forest near my dacha. He looks to be less than 100 years old. Let's see what was here in the 1770s. Let's open a fragment of the survey map of the Zvenigorod district of the Moscow region. I marked the location of our dachas with a blue square:

Stripes are arable land. It is noteworthy that to the right of the dachas we see a forest, but below - arable land. Where the forest now grows, there was arable land, and the forest is indicated on the site of the current field, which is located on our side of Moscow. It is interesting that even the Pokrovka River, which now begins in the field near the White House and goes through the forest, on this map begins in the forest, and then goes among the arable land. Let's trace the state of this area on other maps.

Another survey map from the same period. If the dotted line marks the boundaries of the forest, then, surprisingly, the forest is present on it in almost the same configuration as now.

Our ravine with a forked tongue is not visible here. It looks like the wrong piece of the map is inserted in this place. Above you can see a similar forked ravine, but this is not our ravine, but the one located behind the SNT "Spring". I determined the location of our dachas by superimposing the previous map on this one - all other objects more or less coincided, which means that the location of the current location of the dachas was determined correctly.

The village of Pokrovskoye on these two maps is located very close to our ravine. Maps at that time were compiled by eye, so such strong distortions are normal. Based on this, I can assume that the arable land on the previous map is not where we now have a forest, but near the village of Pokrovskoye, but due to strong distortions, it turned out that they almost stuck to our ravine. In addition, the forest on the first map to the right of the ravine is shown rather conditionally, so it is possible that the distance to it was greater, and the field could have been deployed incorrectly. In this sense, the second map seems to me more accurate. There, the boundaries of the forest are clearly marked, just like the Pokrovka River.

Thus, based on the second map, we can conclude that in the 1770s the forest grew in approximately the same place as now. (plus it also grew in the area where the White House now stands). That is, 250 years ago there was a forest here too. But where, then, are the 250-year-old trees? There is not.

Let's take a look at the latest maps. Maybe the forest was cut down there, and this was somehow reflected in them?

Schubert's map based on surveys that took place in 1838-1839. most accurate and detailed map of this area for all time, reprinted with infrastructural additions for almost the next century. The so-called "odnoverstka", that is, 1 verst in 1 inch (1 cm = 420 m). Here I've zoomed in 2 times for convenience:

The map was made scientific methods, so there is practically no distortion. We see the same picture that we saw on the survey maps created 50-70 years earlier. That is, all this time the forest remained in its place.

Another map built according to the shooting that took place a little later, in 1852-1853:

Although this is a more recent map, it is less detailed. There is no Davydkovo-Burtsevo road on it. But the relief is better worked out. For 10 new years, nothing happened to the forest either.

Wow! We see our forest clearing! That is, immediately after the revolution, it already existed! Again the forest is in place, has not disappeared anywhere. It has been standing for 150 years!

Let's continue monitoring. During the Great Patriotic War A German spy plane took aerial photography of our area in 1942, on which we can see not only the presence of the forest, but also its condition:

What do we see? Kyiv highway appeared, but the forest almost exactly matches what we saw on the maps earlier. However, we see huge clearing on the right, which cuts like a triangle into the forest from the side of the Kyiv highway, as well as completely bald meadow a little to the left. Visible and our forest clearing, which connects the nose white field with a bald clearing by the highway. I note that if you do not know that there was a felling in that place, it would be rather difficult to identify it on the spot today, although there is an elusive change in the nature of the forest there.

Photo from a 1966 American spy satellite. 25 years have passed, and the felling is almost invisible:

But the light forest on the right at the end of the field is now completely cut down, and turned into a new field, and the edge of our forest from the side of the field is slightly cut.

A 1972 snapshot, also from an American spy satellite:

There are no changes with the forest, but it is clear that instead of our ravine, a pond has appeared, blocked by a dam, and dirt roads became more disorganized.

The borders of the forest are the same as in the 1972 photo. The forest is already 200 years old, but there are still no old trees in it! By the way, the above map in the 80s in paper form hung on my wall. It gave me great pleasure to see our garden plots on it!

Now let's look at Google satellite imagery last period. Early Spring 2006:

Compared to 1966-1972, the forest has not changed much due to the exclusion of the clearing of the oil pipeline, laid in 1974 (visible especially well in the forest south of the dachas). This image is also notable for the fact that we can clearly see an evergreen pine piece of forest in it (in the upper right corner of the forest area). In the summer picture of the same year, it is no longer so noticeable:

It is interesting to see a winter snapshot from February 2009. The only winter image of our dachas in the history of Google cartography:

And now, attention! A snapshot from 2012, the forest is 240 years old and still in good shape:

Here's a picture from 2013! Part of the forest has already been cut down! The felling took place in winter by huge tracked vehicles, their traces are visible:

At the same time, the active phase of the expansion of Vnukovo Airport began (seen on the right).

And finally, a modern snapshot of 2017 (though already Yandex). The clearing is overgrown with shrubs, except for the plateau piled on the right:

Thus, despite such attractive theories about being erased from our memory by a cataclysm for some reason, I can assume that our forest was nevertheless gradually cut down periodically, and then grew again. The same can be assumed about the entire Moscow region. Over the past centuries, forests around cities have been actively cut down, grown again and cut down again. It is reasonable to assume that Siberian forests were also cut down, but already on a large-scale industrial scale. In addition, they periodically burned. In previous centuries, when they were not extinguished, they could burn for a very long time until a downpour extinguished them, which means it becomes clear why they are all so young.

But why don't forests burn down on the American continent? Perhaps there is a different climate, more intense rains, which immediately extinguish a tree set on fire by lightning?

But then the question is, why do we so easily imagine these thousand-year-old oak forests, as if we have a memory of them somewhere deep in the subconscious? Why are dense forests so often described in our fairy tales? So, they were still there several centuries ago? Maybe. After all, there were few people, there was no large-scale industrial felling yet, and the eastern regions of Russia are more prone to lightning fires with a more pronounced continental climate. Well, it remains only to regret that those fabulous times have already passed...

By the way, if you are prone to conspiracy theories, read this man, very interesting: