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ANTHROPOGENIC INFLUENCES ON FORESTS

Human influence on the northern forests of Russia developed in two key stages, divided by the advent of intensive industrial growth. In time, the boundary between the two is fluid, shifting between regions that are populated and close to big markets to those more remote. In some pockets, development began in the 17th and 18th centuries in connection with industrial production of salt, charcoal and other goods. However, most of the area saw little growth until the middle of the 19th century, when wood exports from the northern ports to Europe fueled a rapid expansion.

Despite the influence of pre-industrial human activity on the structure and dynamics of the taiga landscape, it is, for the purposes of this work, treated as a historical factor in forming the taiga rather than as anthropogenic disturbance.

Each period has brought its own peculiarities of human influence on Russia's natural landscape. It would be wrong to say that the influence of humans before industrial scale exploitation was small enough to be negligible. From the very start, human settlements have been, at the very least, a considerable additional source of forest fire, thereby contributing in no minor way to the formation of taiga ecosystems. Later, slash and burn agriculture, harvesting of grass on the flood beds of creeks, logging, hunting and fishing for local needs, and other practices of natural economy played an important role.

Fig. 22. Log drive. ("Forest to the new building" - Sovietskoe Foto, 1959, No. 11. Photo: Yu. Barmin and V. Savostyanov)

Many forms of pre-industrial resource management continued to be practiced during the better part of the second, industrial growth stage. Slash and burn agriculture existed up until the 1930's, ending mainly as a result of collectivization and liquidation of single-family farms. A system of hunting cabins still exists and is even maintained in some areas, although the density of cabins and the frequency of their use has declined. And while production of hay on small flooded fields along small rivers and creeks continues sporadically, the majority of such fields have been gradually abandoned since the beginning of the 20th century. These traces of pre-industrial utilization including overgrown grain and hay plots, remnants of old hunting cabins, and sometimes even small villages, can be found in the middle of what is today wild and absolutely unpopulated territory.

Despite pre-industrial human activity's influence on the structure and dynamics of the taiga landscape, it is, for the purposes of this work, treated as a historical factor in forming the taiga rather than as anthropogenic disturbance (see the section Background human influence). Therefore, infrastructure from this period (villages, transportation corridors, production centers) have been excluded from designation of intact areas.

Russia's natural ecosystems have been manipulated to a much greater degree during the second phase of human utilization, associated with intensive industrial development of boreal forest resources. A more detailed account of this phase and its main stages is given below.

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