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E. Volkova 2010. The regional analysis of forest management risks
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Despite such a considerable forest vegetation potential, the share of forestry products in the total
regional product structure accounts only for 6%. In many respects this is due to economic
reasons – general recession in the development of forest industry, distant location of logging
sites, deterioration of the major forest fund and other reasons (State of environment 2009).
In addition to economic reasons, severe environmental and climatic conditions play there own
restraining role: low winter temperatures, great weather variability, large and sudden changes of
daily and annual temperatures, severe hydrological situation. All these factors aggravate the
risks of forest exploitation activities in the Tomsk region territory; creation of forestry-based
infrastructure requires involving additional resources in order to minimize the consequences of
adverse weather conditions and better adapt to them. Thus, the analysis of natural hazards and
risks influencing the forest exploitation practices, which would take into account social and
economic consequences connected with them, is an important and essential prerequisite
condition for sustainable usage and preservation of the forest resources of the territory.
2. Methodology
This paper presents the analysis of risks in the sphere of forest management, considering both
environmental and economic parameters and based on the complex analysis of environmental
and climatic hazards, as well as resource and ecological potential. For the analysis of the study
area the comparative-geographical method was employed. To determine the risks connected
with adverse environmental conditions, we used the methods of qualitative factor analysis and
ecologo-economic balance of the territory. Also, a considerable amount of reference statistical
and cartographic material was used in the research.
Climatic and hydrological conditions bearing risks for the forest exploitation in the Tomsk
region can be divided into two classes: the risks connected with plantations loss and the risks
connected with forestry works management. The second group of risks associated with
geographical location and natural properties of the territory can be divided into hydrological and
climatic – these risks are mostly indirect, but their socio-economic consequences are no less
important.
To the date, the first group of risks, those leading to the plantations loss, has been studied to
more detail. The greatest risk in the forest exploitation is connected with forest fires, which are
primarily of anthropogenic origin. Also, forest diseases and injurious insects have a large
impact. The area of plantings lost for these reasons varies considerably by years and different
forestry sites. The loss amount mostly depends on weather conditions of the current year and, in
case of harmful insects, also of previous years. Besides, 15% of total risks are connected with
hurricane winds and 13% – with forest fires caused by thunderstorms. At this, the main damage
falls onto economic forests of natural origin, where the impact of all adverse factors is revealed
most vividly (Nevidimova and Melnik and Volkova 2009).
For the analysis of ecological and forest resource potential different types of plantings were
chosen, based on the statistical data for the period of 1991-2006 and the data received from 21
weather forecast stations located in different climatic areas of the territory.
The assessment of ecological potential included such stratum parameters of dominant species as
productivity class, average volume density and average annual growth rate. The tree species
types and plantations proportion in the forested area have also been taken into account in the
calculation. Ecological potential can be defined as a set of useful properties of planting
communities, needed to perform their basic environmental, landscape-protecting, landscapestabilizing
and economico-ecological functions.
To practically assess the impact of each of these factors on the ecological potential, their
heterogeneous quantitative parameters were converted into scores. Ecological potential (EP)
was calculated by the formula:
n
EP = 2/3 ∑ S
i
( Bi
+ Pi
+ Zi
) +1/3 S
j
( B
j
+ Pj
+ Z
j
)
i=
1
k
∑
j = 1
(1),
Forest Landscapes and Global Change-New Frontiers in Management, Conservation and Restoration. Proceedings of the IUFRO Landscape Ecology
Working Group International Conference, September 21-27, 2010, Bragança, Portugal. J.C. Azevedo, M. Feliciano, J. Castro & M.A. Pinto (eds.)
2010, Instituto Politécnico de Bragança, Bragança, Portugal.