Why are all the trees in Russia young, but in America the trees are long-lived? But in Russia there is a lot of coal. Exposing alternative history - why there are no old trees in forests Why trees are older than 200 years

It is precisely the wary attitude towards Alexei Kungurov’s statements regarding Perm forests and Prosek, at one of his conferences, prompted me to conduct this research. Well, of course! There was a mysterious hint of hundreds of kilometers of clearings in the forests and their age. I personally was hooked by the fact that I walk through the forest quite often and quite far, but I didn’t notice anything unusual.
And this time the 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 carrying out forest management in the forest fund of Russia.” This did not add clarity, rather the opposite. But there was confidence that things are dirty here.
First amazing fact , which was confirmed - dimension of the quarter network. A quarter network, by definition, is “a system of forest quarters created on forest fund lands for the purpose of inventorying the forest fund, organizing and maintaining forestry and forest management.” The quarterly network consists of quarterly clearings. This is a straight strip cleared of trees and shrubs (usually up to 4 m wide), laid in the forest to mark the boundaries of forest blocks. During forest management, quarterly clearings are cut and cleared to a width of 0.5 m, and their expansion to 4 m is carried out in subsequent years by forestry workers.
In the picture you can see what these clearings look like in Udmurtia. The picture was taken from the program « Google Earth» (see Fig. 2). The neighborhoods have rectangular view. For measurement accuracy, a segment of 5 blocks wide is marked. She made up 5340 m, which means that the width of 1 quarter is 1067 meters, or exactly 1 way mile. The quality of the picture leaves much to be desired, but I myself walk along these clearings all the time, and what you see from above I know well 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?
I checked. The instructions state that blocks should be 1 by 2 km in size. The error at this distance is allowed no more than 20 meters. But 20 is not 340. However, all forest management documents stipulate that if block network projects already exist, then you should simply link to them. This is understandable; the work of laying clearings is a lot of work to redo.
Today there are already machines for cutting down glades (see Fig. 3), but we should forget about them, 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 mile-long block network. There are also kilometer-long ones, of course, because in the last century foresters have also been doing something, but mostly it’s the mile-long one. In particular, in Udmurtia there are no kilometer-long clearings. This means that the design and practical construction of a block network in most of the forest areas of the European part of Russia were completed no later than 1918. It was at this time that the metric system of measures was adopted for mandatory use in Russia, and the mile gave way to the kilometer.
It turns out made with axes and jigsaws, if we, of course, correctly understand historical reality. Considering that the forest area of ​​the European part of Russia is the size of about 200 million hectares, this is titanic work. The calculation shows that the total length of the clearings is about 3 million km. For clarity, imagine the first lumberjack, armed with a saw or an ax. In a day he will be able to clear on average no more than 10 meters of clearing. But we must not forget that this work can be carried out mainly in winter time. This means that even 20,000 lumberjacks, working annually, would create our excellent verst quarter network for at least 80 years.
But there has never been such a number of workers involved in forest management. Based on articles from 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 purpose they drove peasants from surrounding villages to do free work, it is still unclear who did this in sparsely populated areas Perm, Kirov, Vologda regions.
After this fact, it is no longer so surprising that the entire neighborhood network is tilted by about 10 degrees and is not directed towards the geographic North Pole, and apparently on magnetic(the markings were carried out using a compass, not GPS navigator), which should have been located approximately 1000 kilometers towards Kamchatka at that time. And it’s not so embarrassing that magnetic pole, according to official data from scientists, has never been there from the 17th century to the present day. It’s no longer scary that even today the compass needle points in approximately the same direction in which the quarterly network was made before 1918. All this cannot happen anyway! All logic falls apart.
But it is there. And in order to finish off the consciousness clinging to reality, I inform you that all this equipment also needs to 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” must monitor the clearings. Well, if in Soviet time If anyone was watching, it’s unlikely that over the past 20 years. But the clearings are not overgrown. There is a windbreak, but there are no trees in the middle of the road. But in 20 years, a pine seed that accidentally fell to the ground, of which billions are sown annually, grows up to 8 meters in height. Not only are the clearings not overgrown, you won’t even see stumps from periodic clearings. This is all the more striking in comparison with power lines, which special teams Clear away overgrown bushes and trees regularly.
This is what typical clearings in our forests look like. Grass, sometimes there are 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 corresponding table.

IN different sources the numbers are slightly different, but not significantly. Pine and spruce must normal conditions live out up to 300…400 years. You begin to understand how absurd everything is only when you compare the diameter of such a tree with what we see in our forests. A 300-year-old spruce 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 haven’t seen anything thicker than 80 cm. There aren’t many of them. There are individual copies ( in Udmurtia - 2 pines) which 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 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 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 animals begin to actively grow. Therefore, a natural forest consists of different generations, and crown density is the main indicator of this.
But if the forest was clear-cut, then new trees for a long time grow simultaneously, crown density is high, more than 40%. Several centuries will pass, and if the forest is not touched, then the struggle for a place in the sun will do its job. It will become natural again. Do you want to know how much natural forest there is in our country that is not affected by anything? Please, map of Russian forests (see Fig. 6).
Bright shades indicate forests with a high canopy density, that is, these are not “natural forests.” And these are the majority. The entire European part is indicated in rich blue. This is as shown 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 areas of coniferous forests. Almost all of them are derivative forests, formed on the site of primary forests as a result of logging, clearing, forest fires...”
You don’t have to stop at the mountains and tundra zone; there the rarity of crowns may be due to other reasons. But the plains and middle lane covers clearly a young forest. How young? Go and check it out. It is unlikely that you will find a tree in the forest that is older than 150 years. Even a standard drill for determining the age of a tree is 36 cm long and is designed for a tree age of 130 years. 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. Moreover: Forest fires in the taiga are so common that some researchers consider the taiga as many burnt areas of different ages - more precisely, many 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, replacing old generations of trees with young ones..."
All this is called . That's where the dog is buried. The forest was burning, and was practically burning everywhere. And this, according to experts, main reason the age of our forests. Not fungus, not bugs, not hurricanes. Our entire taiga is in burnt areas, and after a fire, what remains is the same as after clear cutting. From here high crown density throughout almost the entire forest zone. Of course, there are exceptions - truly untouched forests in the Angara region, on Valaam and, probably, somewhere else in the vast expanses of our vast Motherland. There are really fabulously big trees there in its entirety. And although these are small islands in the vast sea of ​​taiga, they prove that the forest can be like this.
What is so common about 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 observing the sequence, and certainly at different times?
First we 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, suggests that large-scale fires, which so rejuvenated our forests, occurred over a period of no more than 100 years. Translating into 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 arson in the summer of 2010, which all experts called catastrophic in volume, only 2 million hectares. It turns out there is nothing “so ordinary” about this. The last justification for such a burned-out past of our forests could be the tradition of slash-and-burn agriculture. But how, in this case, can we 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 labor-intensive cultural use of limited areas of forest, and not at all the unrestrained burning of large tracts in hot weather. summer time, yes with the breeze.
Having gone through everything possible options, we can say with confidence that scientific concept “dynamics of random violations” nothing in real life not justified, and is myth, intended to disguise the inadequate state of the current forests of Russia, and therefore events that led to this.
We will have to admit that our forests either burned intensely (beyond any norm) and constantly throughout the 19th century (which in itself is inexplicable and not recorded anywhere), or burned down at one time as a result some incident, which is why the scientific world furiously denies it, having no arguments other than that in official history nothing like this is recorded.
To all this we can add that the fabulously large trees in the old natural forests obviously they were. It has already been said about the preserved 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. There are a huge number of oak trees growing there. But, again, you won’t find old copies. The same 150 years, no older. Older single copies are all the same. There is a photograph 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 very conditional. Who knows, maybe he somehow survived the fires, this happens. The largest oak tree in Russia is considered to be a specimen growing in the Lipetsk region. According to conventional 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 rivers. My relatives from Chuvashia told me that they pulled out huge specimens up to 1.5 m in diameter from the bottom. AND there were a lot of them(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 current oak trees from growing to such sizes. What, maybe earlier? “dynamics of random violations” did it work in a special way in the form of thunderstorms and lightning? No, everything was the same. So it turns out that the current forest simply has not yet reached maturity.
Let's summarize what we learned from this study. There are a lot of contradictions between the reality that we see with our own eyes and the official interpretation of the relatively recent past:
- There is a developed neighborhood network in a huge space, which was designed in versts and was laid no later than 1918. The length of the clearings is such that 20,000 lumberjacks, using manual labor, would take 80 years to create it. The clearings are maintained very irregularly, if at all, but they do not become overgrown.
- On the other side According to historians and surviving articles on forestry, there was no funding of comparable scale and the required number of forestry specialists at that time. There was no way to recruit such a number of free work force. There was no mechanization to facilitate this work. We need to choose: either our eyes deceive us, or The 19th century wasn't like that at all, as historians tell us. In particular, there could be mechanization, commensurate with the described tasks (What interesting purpose could this steam engine from the film “The Barber of Siberia” (see Fig. 9) be intended for? Or is Mikhalkov a completely unimaginable dreamer?).
There could also have been less labor-intensive, effective technologies for laying and maintaining clearings, which have been lost today (some distant analogue of herbicides). It is probably stupid to say that Russia has not lost anything since 1917. Finally, it is possible that clearings were not cut, but trees were planted in blocks in areas destroyed by fire. This is not such nonsense compared to what science tells us. Although 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 Russian forests 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 areas of forest with trees of similar age.
According to experts, all our forests are burnt. It is the fires in their opinion, do not give 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 adopted the theory of “dynamics of random disturbances.” This theory suggests that forest fires are considered a common occurrence, destroying (according to some incomprehensible schedule) up to 7 million hectares of forest per year, although in 2010 even 2 million hectares destroyed as a result of deliberate forest fires were called catastrophe.
You need to select: either our eyes are deceiving us again, or some grandiose events of the 19th century with particular impudence, they were not reflected in the official version of our past, as neither

One of the arguments against the fact that a large-scale catastrophe could have happened 200 years ago is the myth about “relict” forests that supposedly grow in the Urals and in Western Siberia.
I first came across the idea that there was something wrong with our “relict” forests ten years ago, when I accidentally discovered that in the “relict” city forest, firstly, there were no old trees older than 150 years. , and secondly, there is a very thin fertile layer there, about 20-30 cm. This was strange, because while reading various articles on ecology and forestry, I repeatedly came across information that over a thousand years a fertile layer of about one meter is formed in the forest, then yes, a millimeter per year. A little later it turned out that a similar picture was 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 asking local experts about this topic, they began to explain to me something 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 I have to think differently that I don’t understand anything about this and it’s better not to get involved. At that moment, this explanation, in general, suited me.
In addition, it turned out that it is necessary to distinguish between the concept of “relict forest”, when we are talking about forests that have been growing in a given area for a very long time, and the concept of “relict plants”, that is, those that have been preserved since ancient times only in a given place. The last term does not mean at all that the plants themselves and the forests in which they grow are old, and accordingly the presence large quantity relict plants in the forests of the Urals and Siberia does not prove that the forests themselves have been growing in this place unchanged for thousands of years.
When I began to understand “Tape Burs” 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 band bur called relict? What's relict about it? They write that it owes its existence to a glacier. The glacier disappeared thousands of years ago (according to the tortured people). Pine lives for 400 years and grows up to 40 meters in the air. If the glacier disappeared so long ago, then where was the ribbon forest all this time? Why are there practically no old trees in it? And where are the dead trees? Why is there only a few centimeters of soil there and then sand? Even in three hundred years, the cones/needles should have given 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, disappeared not 10,000 years ago, but much closer to time for us... 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, regardless 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 talked about this topic with a representative of one of the companies 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 happen, and immediately in front of me he called the person who was responsible for statistical processing. And the person confirmed this, that the maximum age of the trees that were taken into account in this work was 150 years. True, the version they issued stated that in the Urals and Siberia, coniferous trees generally do not live more than 150 years, so they are not taken into account.
We open the directory on the age of trees http://www.sci.aha.ru/ALL/e13.htm and see that Scots pine lives 300-400 years, in especially favorable conditions up to 600 years, Siberian pine 400-500 years, Norway spruce is 300-400 (500) years old, prickly spruce is 400-600 years old, and Siberian larch is 500 years old under normal conditions, and up to 900 years old under especially favorable conditions!
It turns out that everywhere these trees live for at least 300 years, and in Siberia and the Urals no more than 150?
You can see what relict forests should really look like here: http://www.kulturologia.ru/blogs/191012/17266/ These are photographs from the cutting down of sequoias in Canada at the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th centuries, the thickness of the trunks of which reaches up to 6 meters, and age up to 1500 years. Well, it’s Canada, but here, they say, redwoods don’t grow. None of the “specialists” could really explain why they don’t grow if the climate is almost the same.


Now yes, now they are not growing. But it turns out that similar trees grew here too. Guys from our Chelyabinsk state university who participated in excavations in the area of ​​Arkaim and the “country of cities” in the south Chelyabinsk region, they said that where the steppe is now, in the time of Arkaim there were coniferous forests, and in some places we met there giant trees, whose trunk diameter was up to 4 - 6 meters! That is, they were comparable to those we see in the photo from Canada. The version of 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, the whole forest here has been cut down, let’s go cut it down somewhere else. The Arkaimites apparently did not yet know that forests could be planted and regrown, as they had done everywhere since at least the 18th century. Why in 5500 years (Arkaim is now dated as old) the forest in this place did not recover on its own, there is no clear answer. He didn’t grow up, well, he didn’t grow up. It happened that way.

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




In the first two photos, I cut down pine trees at the age of 250 years. The trunk diameter is more than a meter. Directly above it are two pyramids, which are made from cuts of pine trunks aged 100 years, the right one grew freely, the left one grew in a mixed forest. In the forests in which I have been, mostly similar 100-year-old trees or a little thicker are observed.




They are shown larger in these photos. At the same time, the difference between a pine tree that grew in the wild and in an ordinary forest is not very significant, and the difference between a pine tree that is 250 years old and 100 years old is just about 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 even be from an ordinary pine tree about 600 years old.


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

From the above photographs it follows that at least pine trees are 250 years old, and taking into account the production of sawn timber in the 50s of the 20th century, those born 300 years from today in the European part of Russia take place, or at least met there 50 years ago. During my life, I have walked through forests for hundreds of kilometers, both in the Urals and in Siberia. But I have never seen pines as large as in the first photo, with a trunk more than a meter thick! Neither in the forests nor on open spaces, neither in populated areas nor in hard-to-reach areas. Naturally, my personal observations are not yet an indicator, but this is confirmed by the observations of many other people. If anyone reading can give examples of long-living trees in the Urals or Siberia, then you are welcome to provide photographs indicating the place and time when they were taken.

If we look at the available photographs of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, we will see very young forests in Siberia. Here are photographs known to many from the site of the fall of the Tunguska meteorite, which were 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 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 provides interesting historical photographs from the construction of the Trans-Siberian Railway in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. On them, too, we see only young forest everywhere. No thick old trees are observed. An even larger selection of old photographs from the construction of the Trans-Siberian Railway is here http://murzind.livejournal.com/900232.html












Thus, there are many facts and observations that indicate that in a large area of ​​the Urals and Siberia there are virtually no forests older than 200 years. At the same time, I want to immediately make a reservation 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 there.

P.S. And this is another article about “relict” forests

Russia is the world's largest forest power. It is all the more surprising that our forests are very young, they are no more than 200 years old.

They should live and live

I first thought about this while looking at the paintings of I.I. Shishkina. Something about them alarmed me. And one day I realized: beautiful forest in all the paintings it looks little like a dense animal; rather, it depicts young animals. Why didn’t the artist capture the forest with old, centuries-old trees? Yes, because in those years there was no such forest on Russian territory.

In order for the reader to have an understanding of how long a tree can live, I will tell you the age of some trees. Olive lives 2000 years, royal oak - 2000, yew - 2000, juniper - 1700-2000 years, oak - 500-900, cedar pine - 1200 years, sycamore maple - 1100, Siberian larch - 700-900, Siberian cedar - 850, linden – 800, spruce – 300, birch – 100–120 years. The main characters of our forests are pine, spruce, birch, and oak.

According to researchers from the Polar Alpine Botanical Garden-Institute A.V. Kuzmina and O.A. Goncharova, average age trees Murmansk region about 150 years. The picture is similar throughout Russia. Don't believe me? Get out into the forest and try to find at least one tree older than 200–300 years. It won't work. And such a tree would be visible from afar. For example, a spruce of this age should have a diameter of at least two meters! According to archaeologists excavating ancient city Arkaim, in the Chelyabinsk region there were coniferous forests with trees more than five meters in diameter!

Eat historical sources, indicating that our forests should be more mature. Travelers of the 18th century reported large oak trees in Valdai. There are also earlier sources. Alberto Campenze (1490–1542), a Dutch writer, reported on Muscovy in a letter addressed to Pope Clement VII: “In general, they have much more woods than we do. Pines are incredibly large, so one tree is enough for the mast itself. big ship" In official history, the entire territory of Russia was called Muscovy until the 18th century. Hence the natural question: where are trees over 500 years old on Russian territory? There is none of them. There are, of course, individual specimens preserved thanks to man. For example, the so-called Peter's oaks in the Moscow Kolomenskoye Museum-Reserve, which are about 500 years old.

Massive rejuvenation

The Tale of Bygone Years mentions a huge forest area - the Okovsky forest, the remains of which are located in the southwestern part of the Tver region. This chronicle was written around 1110–1118. It turns out that the trees in the Okovsky forest must be at least 900 years old, and if we take into account that the forest was already standing at the time of writing “The Tale” and the events described in it, then the age of some species must be more than 1000 years. The basis of the Okovsky forest were spruce and oak trees. According to the tree age tables, there should be an old forest here. But in the forests of the Tver region, the average age of trees is again about 150 years.

In a normal forest there should be both old trees and young ones, just like in the photo late XIX- early twentieth century - deforestation in Humboldt County, California. Notice - thick trees next to thin trees, that is, old trees with young trees. But... Why are there no tree tops? As if the forest had undergone some kind of catastrophic impact. We can see a similar picture in the photo of the site where the Tunguska meteorite fell in 1908. At that time, a forest covering an area of ​​2000 km² was felled in Siberia. But the most interesting thing is that there are no old trees of large diameter at the site where the Tunguska body fell. That is, at that time a young forest was growing in Siberia! But the main forest reserves of Russia are concentrated in Siberia.

Another proof of the youth of our forests is the wide distribution of birches. As you know, many of their species grow in clearings, burnt areas, and wastelands. Average duration The life of a birch is 100–120 years. If we start from the average age of forests at 150 years, it turns out that most of Russia’s forests were subjected to catastrophic destruction around 1840–1870. But, most likely, the most accurate date is 1810–1815. After the destruction of the forests, the land was completely a burnt area. And only by 1840 did their full-scale restoration begin. In place of the so-called deforestation, new young growth grew.

What does science say?

It is worth immediately abandoning the version that the forests were destroyed by cutting down for economic needs: for kindling or housing construction. Yes, the forest was used by humans. For example, during the time of Catherine II, trade in ship timber flourished. Oak trees were used, according to the German traveler Adam Olearius (1599–1671), “for ritual fire in honor of Perun the Thunderer.” But it is impossible to destroy a forest on the territory of, say, the Tver region in a short period of time. Yes, Russian people did not treat the forest so barbarically. For him, the forest has always been his breadwinner. Picking mushrooms, berries, medicinal plants, hunting, beekeeping – part way of life, a way of surviving in years of crop failure. The forest is an integral part of the folklore and mythology of the Rus. Pain-boshka, Borovik, Leshy, Moss-haired Man and other characters lived there.

The version of natural fires also does not stand up to criticism. The forest cannot burn all over Russia at the same time. Only if fires are caused artificially. Let me remind you that in 2010, 2 million hectares of forest burned in 20 regions of the country. Experts immediately called this event a disaster, and alternative researchers said that the forest was set on fire artificially, including from space satellites.

Official science recognizes the youth of forests on Russian territory. Science also recognizes, for example, that Siberian larch currently grows mainly in burnt areas. A study of the boundaries of her age showed interesting results: trees up to 50 years old – 7.1%; 51–100 years old – 3.7%; 101–200 years – 68%; 201–299 years old – 20.5%; over 300 years – 0.7%. The age of the main mass of larch is 101–200 years. And according to the age table, Siberian larch is listed as a long-liver and under normal conditions should reach an age of 700–900 years. Where are these long-livers in their native forests? Logically modern science- burned out. Since “forest fires are the main mechanism for renewing forests, replacing old trees with young trees,” natural fires do not allow trees to live to an old age. However, there is such a unique natural spring wood like bog oak or, in other words, “ebony”. It is mined from the depths of rivers and swamps, in places where oak grew many thousands of years ago. The wood acquires its black color after staining for more than 1000 years. The diameter of some specimens is sometimes more than two meters! This means that modern oaks can and should be much older and, accordingly, larger.

Alexey Kozhin

Photography - shutterstock.com ©

Read more in June issue(No. 6, 2015) magazine “Miracles and Adventures”

In Russia, the Council for the Preservation of the Natural Heritage of the Nation in the Federation Council of the Federal Assembly of the Russian Federation has opened the program “Trees - Monuments of Living Nature”. Enthusiasts all over the country search with fire during the day for trees two hundred years old and older. Trees that are two hundred years old are unique! So far, about 200 of all breeds and varieties have been discovered 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 is on this moment, oldest tree in the Kurgan region, whose age is set by experts at 189 years, is slightly short of 200 years. Pine grows in Ozerninsko Bor near the Sosnovaya Roshcha sanatorium. And the forest itself, naturally, is much younger: the Patrirah pine grew alone for many years, which can be seen from the shape of the tree’s crown.
Another application was received from the Kurgan region, claiming a pine tree over 200 years old:

This tree ended up on the territory of the arboretum - it was preserved along with some other local species that grew on this territory before the establishment of the arboretum. The arboretum was founded when a tree nursery was organized for the Forestry School, created in 1893. A forest school and a forest nursery were necessary to train forestry specialists who were to carry out work on forest allotment and assessment during the construction of the Kurgan section of the Trans-Siberian railway at the end of the 19th century.
Note: the forest school and tree nursery were founded about 120 years ago and their purpose was to evaluate forest lands that already existed by that time.
These two trees grow in the Kurgan region, this is the south of Western Siberia - it borders on the Chelyabinsk, Tyumen, Omsk regions, and in the south - on Kazakhstan.
Let us pay attention: both trees began their life not in the forest, but in an open field - this is evidenced by the shape of their crown and the presence of branches extending almost from the very base. Pines growing in the forest are a bare, straight whip, “without a hitch,” with a panicle on the top, like this group of pines on the left side of the photo:

Here it is, straight as a string, without knots, the trunk of a pine tree that grew next to other pines:

Yes, these pines grew in the middle of the forest, which was here until the early 60s of the last century, before a sand quarry was organized here, from which sand was washed with a dredge onto the highway under construction, which is now called “Baikal”. This place is located a kilometer from the northern outskirts of Kurgan.
Now let’s make a foray into the Kurgan forest and look at the “structure” of a typical West Siberian forest on the ground. Let's move a kilometer away from the lake into the thick of the "ancient" forest.
In the forest you constantly come across trees like this pine in the center:

This is not a withered 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 from below began to dry; the same tree is visible on the left in the background of the frame.

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

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

You understand: pine trees at 200 years old will cease to be rare, in the Kurgan region alone there will be countless of them, pine trees over 150 years old, grown in the forest, with a trunk as straight as a telegraph pole without knots, will grow everywhere, but now there are no such ones at all, that is, no at all.
Of the entire mass of pine monuments, I found only one that grew in the forest, in the Khanty-Mansiysk Okrug:

Considering the harsh climate of those places (equated to the regions of the Far North), with a trunk thickness of 66 cm, it is fair to consider this tree to be much older than 200 years. At the same time, the applicants noted that this pine is rare for local forests. And in the local forests, with an area of ​​at least 54 thousand hectares, there is nothing like that! There are forests, but the forest in which this pine was born has disappeared somewhere - after all, it grew and stretched among pines that were even older. But there are none.
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, we have ideal conditions for them. Pine trees are very resistant to diseases, and with age, resistance only increases, fires are not terrible for pines - there is nothing to burn down there, pine trees can easily tolerate ground fires, but high fires are still very rare. And, again, mature pines are more resistant to fires, so fires destroy, first of all, young trees.
After the above, will anyone argue with the statement that we had no forests at all 150 years ago? There was a desert, like the Sahara - bare sand:

This is a firebreak. What we see: the forest stands on bare sand, covered only with pine 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. This is hundreds of thousands of hectares of forest, if not millions - if this is so, then the Sahara is resting! And all this was literally some hundred and fifty years ago!
The sand is dazzlingly white, without any impurities at all!
And meet similar sands, it seems, is possible not only in the Western Siberian Lowland. For example, there is something similar in Transbaikalia - there is a small area there, only five by ten kilometers, that still stands in “undeveloped” taiga, and the locals consider it a “Miracle of Nature.”

And it was given the status of a geological reserve. We have this “miracle” - well, there are heaps, only this forest in which we spent an excursion measures 50 by 60 kilometers, and no one sees any miracles and no one organizes nature reserves - as if this is how it should be...
By the way, the fact that Transbaikalia was a complete desert in the 19th century was documented by photographers of that time; I have already posted 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 “dead taiga” during the construction of the road to Tomsk:

All of the above convincingly proves: 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 ended up buried in the “cultural layer”, like the first floors of the St. Petersburg Hermitage, the first floors in many Russian cities.
I have already written here several times about this very “cultural layer”, but I can’t resist once again publishing a photo that recently spread around the Internet:

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

But the next photo was taken in central Russia— here the river washes away the bank and centuries-old oak trees, uprooted at one time, appear:

The author of the photo writes that the oak trees are just right - smooth, slender, which indicates that they grew in the forest. And the age, given the thickness (the cover set for the scale is 11 cm), is much older than 200 years.
And again, as Newton said, I am not inventing hypotheses: let the “historians” explain why trees older than 150 years are found in large numbers only under the “cultural layer”.

Another notch for memory. Is everything presented honestly and objectively in the official history?

Most of our forests are young. They are between a quarter and a third of their lives. Apparently, in the 19th century certain events occurred that led to the almost total destruction of our forests. Our forests keep big secrets...

It was a wary attitude towards Alexei Kungurov’s statements about Perm forests and clearings at one of his conferences that prompted me to conduct this research. Well, of course! There was a mysterious hint of hundreds of kilometers of clearings in the forests and their age. I personally was hooked by the fact that I walk through the forest quite often and quite far, but I didn’t notice anything unusual.

And this time the 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 carrying out forest management in the Russian forest fund" This did not add clarity, rather the opposite. But there was confidence that things are dirty here.

The first surprising fact that was confirmed is the dimension quarterly network. By definition, a quarterly network is “ A system of forest blocks created on forest lands for the purpose of inventorying the forest fund, organizing and maintaining forestry and forest management».

The quarterly network consists of quarterly clearings. This is a straight strip cleared of trees and shrubs (usually up to 4 m wide), laid in the forest to mark the boundaries of forest blocks. During forest management, quarterly clearings are cut and cleared to a width of 0.5 m, and their expansion to 4 m is carried out in subsequent years by forestry workers.

Fig.2

In the picture you can see what these clearings look like in Udmurtia. The picture was taken from the Google Earth program ( see Fig.2). The blocks are rectangular in shape. For measurement accuracy, a segment of 5 blocks wide is marked. It was 5340 m, which means that the width of 1 block is 1067 meters, or exactly 1 way mile. The quality of the picture leaves much to be desired, but I myself walk along these clearings all the time, and what you see from above I know well 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 out the neighborhood network? in versts?

I checked. The instructions state that blocks should be 1 by 2 km in size. The error at this distance is allowed no more than 20 meters. But 20 is not 340. However, all forest management documents stipulate that if block network projects already exist, then you should simply link to them. This is understandable; the work of laying clearings is a lot of work to redo.

Fig.3

Today there are already machines for cutting down glades (see. Fig.3), but we should forget about them, 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. There are also kilometer-long ones, of course, because in the last century foresters have also been doing something, but mostly it’s the mile-long one. In particular, in Udmurtia there are no kilometer-long clearings. This means that the design and practical construction of a block network in most of the forest areas of the European part of Russia were completed no later than 1918. It was at this time that the metric system of measures was adopted for mandatory use in Russia, and the mile gave way to the kilometer.

It turns out made with axes and jigsaws, if we, of course, correctly understand historical reality. Considering that the forest area of ​​the European part of Russia is about 200 million hectares, this is titanic work. Calculations show that the total length of the clearings is about 3 million km. For clarity, imagine the first lumberjack, armed with a saw or an ax. In a day he will be able to clear on average no more than 10 meters of clearing. But we must not forget that this work can be carried out mainly in winter. This means that even 20,000 lumberjacks, working annually, would create our excellent verst quarter network for at least 80 years.

But there has never been such a number of workers involved in forest management. Based on articles from 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 purpose peasants were driven from surrounding villages to do free work, it is still unclear 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 tilted by about 10 degrees and is directed not towards the geographic north pole, but, apparently, towards the magnetic one ( The markings were carried out using a compass, not a GPS navigator), which should have been located approximately 1000 kilometers towards Kamchatka at that time. And it’s not so confusing that the magnetic pole, according to official data from scientists, has never been there from the 17th century to the present day. It’s no longer scary that even today the compass needle points in approximately the same direction in which the quarterly network was made before 1918. All this cannot happen anyway! All logic falls apart.

But it is there. And in order to finish off the consciousness clinging to reality, I inform you that all this equipment also needs to 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” must monitor the clearings. Well, if anyone was watching in Soviet times, it’s unlikely that over the past 20 years. 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 won’t even see stumps from periodic clearings. This is all the more striking in comparison with power lines, which special teams regularly clear of overgrown bushes and trees.

Fig.4

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

Fig.5

The second big mystery is the age of our forest, or the trees in this forest. In general, let's go in order. First, let's figure out how long a tree lives. Here is the corresponding table.

* In brackets are the height and life expectancy in particularly favorable conditions.

In different sources, the figures differ slightly, but not significantly. Pine and spruce should live up to 300...400 years under normal conditions. You begin to understand how absurd everything is only when you compare the diameter of such a tree with what we see in our forests. A 300-year-old spruce 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 haven’t seen anything thicker than 80 cm. There aren’t many of them. There are individual copies (in Udmurtia - 2 pines) which 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 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 animals begin to actively grow. Therefore, a natural forest consists of different generations, and crown density is the main indicator of this.

But if the forest was clear-cut, then new trees grow simultaneously for a long time, the crown density is high, more than 40%. Several centuries will pass, and if the forest is not touched, then the struggle for a place in the sun will do its job. It will become natural again. Do you want to know how much natural forest there is in our country that is not affected by anything? Please, map of Russian forests (see. Fig.6).

Fig.6

Bright shades indicate forests with a high canopy density, that is, these are not “natural forests.” And these are the majority. The entire European part is indicated in rich 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 of them are derivative forests, formed on the site of primary forests as a result of logging, clearing, and forest fires».

You don’t have to stop at the mountains and tundra zone; there the rarity of crowns may be due to other reasons. But the plains and middle zone are covered clearly a young forest. How young? Go and check it out. It is unlikely that you will find a tree in the forest that is older than 150 years. Even a standard drill for determining the age of a tree is 36 cm long 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 many burnt areas of different ages - more precisely, many forests formed on these burnt areas. Many researchers believe that forest fires are, if not the only, then at least the main natural mechanism of forest renewal, replacing old generations of trees with young ones…»

All this is called " dynamics of random violations" That's where the dog is buried. The forest was burning, and burning almost everywhere. And this, according to experts, is the main reason for the low age of our forests. Not fungus, not bugs, not hurricanes. Our entire taiga is in burnt areas, and after a fire, what remains is the same as after clear cutting. Hence the high crown density throughout almost the entire forest zone. Of course, there are exceptions - truly untouched forests in the Angara region, on Valaam and, probably, somewhere else in the vast expanses of our vast Motherland. There are really fabulously large trees there in their mass. And although these are small islands in the vast sea of ​​taiga, they prove that a forest can be like that.

What is so common about 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 order, observing the order, and certainly at different times?

First we 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 the large-scale burns that so rejuvenated our forests occurred over a period of no more than 100 years. Translating into dates, for the 19th century alone. For this 7 million hectares of forest had to be burned annually.

Even as a result of large-scale forest arson in the summer of 2010, which all experts called catastrophic in volume, burned only 2 million hectares. It turns out nothing" so ordinary"This is not the case. The last justification for such a burned-out past of our forests could be the tradition of slash-and-burn agriculture. But how, in this case, can we 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 labor-intensive cultural use of limited areas of forest, and not at all the uncontrolled burning of large tracts in the hot summer season, and with the wind.

Having gone through all possible options, we can say with confidence that the scientific concept “ dynamics of random violations“is not substantiated by anything in real life, and is a myth intended to disguise the inadequate state of the current forests of Russia, and therefore the events that led to this.

We will have to admit that our forests are either beyond any norm) and constantly burned throughout the 19th century ( which in itself is inexplicable and not recorded anywhere), or burned at the same time as a result of some incident, which the scientific world vehemently denies, having no arguments other than that in official nothing like this is recorded in history.

To all this we can add that there were clearly fabulously large trees in old natural forests. It has already been said about the preserved areas of the taiga. It is worth giving an example regarding deciduous forests. The Nizhny Novgorod region and Chuvashia have a very favorable climate for deciduous trees. There are a huge number of oak trees growing there. But, again, you won’t find old copies. The same 150 years, no older.

Older single copies are all the same. 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 arbitrary. Who knows, maybe he somehow survived the fires, this happens. The largest oak tree in Russia is considered to be a specimen growing in the Lipetsk region. According to conventional 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 rivers. My relatives from Chuvashia told me that they pulled out huge specimens up to 1.5 m in diameter from the bottom. And there were many of them (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 current oak trees from growing to such sizes. Did the “dynamics of random disturbances” in the form of thunderstorms and lightning work in some special way before? No, everything was the same. So it turns out that the current forest simply has not yet reached maturity.

Fig.8

Let's summarize what we learned from this study. There are a lot of contradictions between the reality that we see with our own eyes and the official interpretation of the relatively recent past:

There is a developed neighborhood network over a vast area, which was designed in miles and was laid no later than 1918. The length of the clearings is such that 20,000 lumberjacks, using manual labor, would take 80 years to create it. The clearings are maintained very irregularly, if at all, but they do not become overgrown.

On the other hand, according to historians and surviving articles on forestry, there was no funding of comparable scale and the required number of forestry specialists at that time. There was no way to recruit such a quantity of free labor. There was no mechanization to facilitate this work.

We need to choose: either our eyes deceive us, or the 19th century was not at all what historians tell us. In particular, there could be mechanization commensurate with the tasks described. What interesting purpose could this steam engine from the film " Siberian barber" (cm. Fig.9). Or is Mikhalkov a completely unimaginable dreamer?

Fig.9

There could also have been less labor-intensive, efficient technologies for laying and maintaining clearings, which are lost today ( some distant analogue of herbicides). It is probably stupid to say that Russia has not lost anything since 1917. Finally, it is possible that clearings were not cut, but trees were planted in blocks in areas destroyed by fire. This is not such nonsense compared to what science tells us. Although 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 Russian forests 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 areas of forest with trees of similar age.

According to experts, all our forests are burnt. It is fires, in their opinion, that do not give 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 adopted the theory “ dynamics of random violations" 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 forest fires, were called a disaster.

We need 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 didn’t fit into it nor Great Tartary, nor the Great Northern Route. Atlantis with a fallen moon and even then they didn’t fit. One-time destruction 200...400 million hectares forests are even easier to imagine and hide than the undying, 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 severe wounds of the earth that the young forest covers? After all, gigantic fires by themselves don't happen...