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 stands mysterious Trees over 200 years old in Russia

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 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, magnetic(marking was carried out by compass, and not by 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 time someone followed, then over the past 20 years 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 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 (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.

AT different sources The numbers are slightly different, but not significantly. Pine and spruce should normal conditions survive 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. 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, 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. All European part denoted by saturated blue color. 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 plots 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 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 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. 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 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, 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. 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. 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 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 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 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, why furiously denies 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. The Nizhny Novgorod region and Chuvashia have a very favorable climate for deciduous trees. grows there great amount oaks. 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 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 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 described tasks (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

Another notch to remember. Is everything honestly and objectively stated in the 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 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 that was confirmed is the 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 were 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 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 the magnetic one ( markings were made using a compass, not a 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 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 are regularly cleared by special teams from overgrown shrubs and trees.

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.

In different sources, the numbers differ slightly, but not significantly. Pine and spruce should live up to 300-400 years under normal conditions. 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. 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 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? 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. The entire European part is marked in deep blue. 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 of coniferous trees or with separate areas of 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 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 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 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 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, 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. 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. There are really fabulously large trees in their 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 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, we can say with confidence that the scientific concept of " dynamics of random disturbances”is not substantiated by anything in real life, and is a myth intended to mask the inadequate state of the current forests of Russia, and hence the events that led to this.

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 the same time as a result of some incident, from which the scientific world furiously denies, having no arguments, except 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. 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. 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. 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 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. 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 Tartary, nor the 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 Belovezhskaya Pushcha? 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 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 explained by 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 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 on a large territory, 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.

Adherents alternative history" - very funny people but the article is not about that. According to this pseudoscience, in the 19th century there was global flood, which destroyed all the forests in central (and maybe not only) Russia. What prompted these wonderful "researchers" to such an idea? Everything turns out to be very simple: all forests in modern Russia- young!

Trees (spruces and pines) in the forests - no older than 150 - 200 years

The photo shows a pine tree (Udmurtia) over 300 years old. As you remember from your last trip to the forest, the pines in it are not at all like this giant winding pine. By the way, maximum age pines and firs reaches 400 years, you can read about this in reference books or textbooks - no one refutes this fact.

Any sane person with a developed outlook, of course, will reject the theory of some kind of miraculous flood that destroyed all the forests, but the fact that the forests are young really makes anyone think. There are really few relic forests in Russia, and even in Siberia, which the hand of a woodcutter has not yet reached, one cannot meet old trees. How so?! Where did the old firs and pines go? Maybe almost all the trees died out 150-200 years ago?

In addition to the authoritative opinion of the “friend of the forester”, who certainly knows better how old the trees in his forest are and the exclamations: “even the foresters do not understand where the old trees in the forests have gone!”, lovers of alternative pseudo-history like to give one more argument in defense of their theory - photographs of Prokudin-Gorsky, a student of Mendeleev, who was the first in Russia to start taking color photographs. Prokudin-Gorsky, starting in 1909, traveled a lot around the country and took color photographs. Why are these photographs of alternative historians so attracted? There are very few trees in the pictures and no forests at all! For some reason, pictures and black-and-white photographs are not taken into account by these wonderful “researchers”, such a feature of this “science” is to reject objectionable facts. We will talk about Prokudin-Gorsky a little later, and now we will begin to explain where the old trees have gone in Russian European forests.

So where did all the old trees go? Exposing the myth!

If you turn to search engines for an answer, you will find heaps of informational garbage that has been bred by the labors of “alternatives”! All the links on the front pages about the flood that destroyed the forests, and not a single sensible page with answers! So - below I will finally reveal the secret of the disappearance of ancient forests.

Spruces and pines live up to 450 years, and this is a fact established real scientists. I will now ask you just one question, which will destroy the entire forest alternative theory and give the long-awaited answers. The maximum age of a person is about 120 years. So why on the street you will not meet even one centenarian? - yes, because they very little! If you look around, you will mostly see people from 20 to 50 years old - they are the most among the population. So why should trees live according to other laws? Where did the trees older than 300 years go? — died out! Yes Yes! Well, now let's turn to reliable sources and consider this issue in more detail.

Natural thinning of forest plantations

Trees, like all life on Earth, fight each other for vital resources: sunlight, moisture, the area in which they grow. But unlike people, they cannot move in search of new resources, no matter how trite it may sound! Quote from an authoritative (unlike any foresters) site:

Among foresters it is considered axiom that the forest normally develops to some certain age(not maximum); after reaching the age of ripeness, it begins fall apart, while losing not only the stock of wood, but also all its environment-forming and environmental properties.

In the forest, as the age and size of trees increase, their number per unit area decreases due to the death of weaker trees, that is, natural thinning or self-thinning of the forest occurs. This phenomenon should be considered as a process of self-regulation of a forest plantation, i.e., bringing the needs of the entire plantation into line with the available vital resources of the environment and how natural selection the fittest trees.

As individual trees grow in size, their need for crown space, food, and moisture increases. In this regard, the total need for the listed factors for the entire forest is also growing. I'll try to explain further plain language. When the trees in the forest are still young, they require much less resources to sustain life, so the number of trunks per unit area is greater. As the trees grow, they need more and more resources, and at one point the trees begin to "conflict" with each other and "fight" for living space. Natural selection comes into play - some trees begin to die already in early age. Self-regulation of the number of trees in a plantation creates conditions for normal growth and long-term existence of a forest plantation due to the death of individual, usually the weakest trees.

Overmature stands - "retirement" age of trees

When the trees reach the age of 100 - 140 years, the forest becomes ripe. At the same time, conifers stop growing in height, but can still grow in width. Overmature - a forest stand that has stopped growing in height, is destroyed by old age and disease (more than 140 years) - coniferous and hardwoods of seed origin. All in all: how older forest- the fewer trees in it.

It is not economically profitable to let the forest grow old - why let nature destroy such a valuable material for humans? Therefore, the overmature forest must be cut down in the first place! In forestry, all forests in the central part of Russia (and not only) are registered and planned for their cutting and planting with new trees. Trees are simply not allowed to live up to 150 years and are cut down in "the prime of life."

If about 200 years ago all the forests were destroyed, then what were the sleepers made of for railways, buildings, ships, heated stoves? My relatives live in Oryol region- a region not rich in forests, so they have practically no wooden buildings!

Fiction and painting

What about the mention of forests and logging in literature and paintings of the 18th and 19th centuries? Just ignore? Or are these masterpieces created by order of the secret world government in order to erase these events from people's memory? Seriously? Damn, this theory is so delusional that it’s hard to find words from amazement: global catastrophes, nuclear war- and no traces of these events, except for "young forests" and "covered with soil" of the first floors of houses ...

Prokudin-Gorsky photos of the forest

Let us return to Prokudin-Gorsky, so dearly loved by the alternatives. Thanks to their efforts, it's hard to find "normal" photos of the early 20th century forest on the Internet, but I found it to be a pleasant viewing.

Conclusions and results

The main mistake of the inventors of alternative history lies in establishing an incorrect causal relationship. If now in a modern forest you cannot find trees older than 200 years, this does not mean at all that all forests were destroyed 200 years ago, it also does not mean that in 100 years our forests will be full of 300-year-old pines! Trees do not appear and die at the same time! In nature, almost everything obeys the normal statistical law of distribution: most of trees has average age, the oldest trees are a minority, and the older they are, the fewer of them. It is surprising that people are unwilling to understand the issue, look for answers, and instead run headlong to tell everyone that humanity is being deceived, because the trees are young! If you doubt something or don’t understand something, don’t sow ignorance, try to figure it out at least a little first. Write comments, I will be glad!

One of the arguments against the fact that a large-scale catastrophe could have happened 200 years ago is the myth about "relic" forests that supposedly grow in the Urals and Western Siberia.
For the first time, I came across the idea that something was wrong with our “relict” forests ten years ago, when I accidentally discovered that in the “relict” urban forest, firstly, old trees older than 150 years are completely absent , and secondly, there is a very thin fertile layer, about 20-30 cm. It was strange, because reading various articles on ecology and forestry, I repeatedly came across information that a fertile layer of about one meter forms in a forest over a thousand years, then yes, millimeters per year. A little later it turned out that a similar picture is observed not only in the central city forest, but also in other pine forests located in Chelyabinsk and its environs. There are no old trees, the fertile layer is thin.

When I began to ask local experts about this topic, they began to explain something to me about the fact that before the revolution, forests were cut down and replanted, and the rate of accumulation of the fertile layer in pine forests it must be considered differently that I don’t understand anything about this and it’s better not to go there. At that moment, this explanation, in general, suited me.
In addition, it turned out that one should distinguish between the concept of "relict forest", when it comes to forests that have been growing in a given territory for a very long time, and the concept of "relict plants", that is, those that have been preserved since ancient times only in this place. The latter term does not mean at all that the plants themselves and the forests in which they grow are old, respectively, the presence a large number relic plants in the forests of the Urals and Siberia does not prove that the forests themselves have been growing in this place invariably for thousands of years.
When I began to deal with the "Tape Forests" and collect information about them, I came across the following message on one of the regional Altai forums:
“One question haunts me... Why is our tape pine forest called relic? What is relic in it? They write, they say, that it owes its origin to the glacier. The glacier came down more than one thousand years ago (according to the tormented ones). Pine lives for 400 years and grows up to 40 meters up. If the glacier went down so long ago, then where was the ribbon forest all this time? Why is there practically no old trees in it? And where are the dead trees? Why is the layer of earth there a few centimeters and immediately sand? Even in three hundred years, the cones/needles should have made a larger layer... In general, it seems that the ribbon forest is a little older than Barnaul (if not younger) and the glacier, thanks to which it arose, did not descend 10,000 years ago, but much closer to we are on time ... Maybe I don’t understand something? ... "
http://forums.drom.ru/altai/t1151485069.html
This message is dated November 15, 2010, that is, at that time there were no videos by Alexei Kungurov, or any other materials on this topic. It turns out that, independently of me, another person had exactly the same questions that I once had.
Upon further study of this topic, it turned out that a similar picture, that is, the absence of old trees and a very thin fertile layer, is observed in almost all forests of the Urals and Siberia. One day I accidentally got into a conversation on this topic with a representative of one of the firms that processed data for our forestry department throughout the country. He began to argue with me and prove that I was wrong, that this could not be, and right there in front of me called the person who was responsible for statistical processing. And the man confirmed this, that the maximum age of the trees that they were registered in this work was 150 years. True, the version they issued said that in the Urals and Siberia coniferous trees basically do not live more than 150 years, so they are not taken into account.
We open the reference book on the age of trees http://www.sci.aha.ru/ALL/e13.htm and see that Scotch pine lives 300-400 years, in especially favorable conditions up to 600 years, Siberian cedar pine 400-500 years, European spruce 300-400 (500) years old, prickly spruce 400-600 years old, and Siberian larch 500 years old normal conditions, and up to 900 years in particularly favorable!
It turns out that everywhere these trees live for at least 300 years, and in Siberia and the Urals no more than 150?
How relic forests should actually look can be seen here: http://www.kulturologia.ru/blogs/191012/17266/ These are photographs from cutting down redwoods in Canada in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the thickness of the trunks of which reaches up to 6 meters, and the age is up to 1500 years. Well, then Canada, but here, they say, sequoias do not grow. Why they don’t grow, if the climate is almost the same, none of the “specialists” could really explain.


Now yes, now they do not grow. But it turns out that similar trees grew with us. Guys from our Chelyabinsk state university, who participated in excavations in the region of Arkaim and the "country of cities" in the south of the Chelyabinsk region, said that where the steppe is now, in the days of Arkaim there were coniferous forests, and in places there were giant trees, whose trunk diameter was up to 4 - 6 meters! That is, they were commensurate with those that we see in the photo from Canada. The version about where these forests went, says that the forests were barbarously cut down by the inhabitants of Arkaim and other settlements they created, and it is even suggested that it was the depletion of the forests that caused the migration of the Arkaim people. Like, here the whole forest was cut down, let's go cut down in another place. The fact that forests can be planted and grown anew, as they did everywhere since at least the 18th century, the Arkaim people, apparently, did not yet know. Why for 5500 years (Arkaim is now dated to such an age) the forest in this place did not recover itself, there is no intelligible answer. Didn't grow up, well, didn't grow up. It so happened.

Here is a series of photographs I took at the local history museum in Yaroslavl this summer when I was on vacation with my family.




In the first two photos he sawed down pine trees at the age of 250 years. The trunk is over a meter in diameter. Directly above it are two pyramids, which are made up of saw cuts of pine trunks at the age of 100 years, the right one grew in freedom, the left one in mixed forest. In the forests, in which I happened to be, there are mostly just similar 100-year-old trees or a little thicker.




These photos show them larger. At the same time, the difference between a pine that grew in freedom and in an ordinary forest is not very significant, and the difference between a pine of 250 years and 100 years is just somewhere around 2.5-3 times. This means that the diameter of a pine trunk at the age of 500 years will be about 3 meters, and at the age of 600 years it will be about 4 meters. That is, the giant stumps found during excavations could have remained even from an ordinary pine tree about 600 years old.


On the last photo saw cuts of pine trees that grew in a dense spruce forest and in a swamp. But I was especially struck in this showcase by a cut down of pine trees at the age of 19, which is on the right at the top. Apparently this tree grew in freedom, but still the thickness of the trunk is simply gigantic! Now trees do not grow at such a speed, even in freedom, even with artificial cultivation with care and feeding, which once again indicates that very strange things are happening on our Planet with the climate.

From the above photographs it follows that at least pine trees aged 250 years, and taking into account the manufacture of saw cuts in the 50s of the 20th century, born 300 years from today, in the European part of Russia have a place to be, or at least met there 50 years ago. During my life I have walked through the forests for more than one hundred kilometers, both in the Urals and in Siberia. But I have never seen such large pine trees as in the first picture, with a trunk thickness of more than a meter! Neither in forests, nor in open spaces, nor in inhabited places, nor in hard-to-reach areas. Naturally, my personal observations are not yet an indicator, but this is also confirmed by the observations of many other people. If one of the readers can give examples of long-lived trees in the Urals or Siberia, then you are welcome to submit photographs indicating the place and time when they were taken.

If you look at the available photographs of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, then in Siberia we will see very young forests. Here are well-known photographs from the site of the fall of the Tunguska meteorite, which have been repeatedly published in various publications and articles on the Internet.










All the photographs clearly show that the forest is quite young, no more than 100 years old. Let me remind you that the Tunguska meteorite fell on June 30, 1908. That is, if the previous large-scale disaster that destroyed the forests in Siberia occurred in 1815, then by 1908 the forest should look exactly like in the photographs. Let me remind skeptics that this territory is still practically uninhabited, and at the beginning of the 20th century there were practically no people there. This means that there was simply no one to cut down the forest for economic or other needs.

Another interesting link to the article http://sibved.livejournal.com/73000.html where the author gives interesting historical photos from the construction of the Trans-Siberian Railway in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. On them, we also see only a young forest everywhere. No thick old trees are observed. Another large selection of old photos from the construction of the Trans-Siberian Railway here http://murzind.livejournal.com/900232.html












Thus, there are many facts and observations that indicate that in the vast territory of the Urals and Siberia, there are actually no forests older than 200 years. At the same time, I want to make a reservation right away that I am not saying that there are no old forests in the Urals and Siberia at all. But precisely in those places where the disaster occurred, they are not.

P.S. And this is another article about "relict" forests