There are no trees older than 200 years in the taiga. And the forest is mysterious. Average age of trees in Russia

Adherents alternative history- very funny people, but the article is not about that. According to this pseudoscience, in the 19th century there was a worldwide flood that 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, the maximum age of pines and spruces 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 a single person even a hundred years old? - 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, compete with each other for vital resources: sunlight, moisture, the area on 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 as a natural selection of the most adapted 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 for railways, buildings, ships, and stoves made of? 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? Hell, this theory is so delusional that it’s hard to find words in amazement: global catastrophes, nuclear war - and no trace of these events, except for “young forests” and “ground-covered” 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.

View from Sekirnaya Gora to the Savvatevsky Skete, 1916

Border of Moscow and Smolensk provinces. Borodino, 1911

Rolling firewood for roasting ore, 1910

Mount Taganay, 1910

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 the trees are of average age, the oldest trees are a minority, and the older they are, the less they are. 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!

In Russia, the Council for the Conservation natural heritage nation in the Federation Council of the Federal Assembly of the Russian Federation, the program "Trees - Monuments of Wildlife" was opened.

Enthusiasts all over the country are looking for trees 200 years old and older with fire during the day.

Two hundred years old trees are unique! So far, about 200 pieces of all breeds and varieties have been found throughout the country. Moreover, most of the trees found have nothing to do with the forest, like this 360-year-old pine. This is determined not only by its modern proud loneliness, but also by the shape of the crown.

Thanks to this program, we are able to fairly objectively assess the age of our forests.

Here are two examples of applications from the Kurgan region.

But in the Kurgan region, perhaps, more favorable conditions for pines - the pine from the Ozerninsky forest, which was discussed above, has a trunk thickness of 110 centimeters and an age of only 189 years. I also found several freshly cut stumps, also about 70 cm in diameter, and counted 130 annual rings. Those. the pines from which the forest began are about 130-150 years old.

If things continue in the same way as the last 150 years - the forests will grow and gain strength - then it is not difficult to predict how the children from these photographs will see this forest in 50-60 years, when they bring their grandchildren to these, for example, pine trees (fragment photograph placed above - pines by the lake).

You understand: pine trees at 200 years old will cease to be a rarity, in the Kurgan region alone there will be unmeasured, pine trees over 150 years old, grown among pine forests, with a trunk as smooth as a telegraph pole without knots, will grow everywhere, but now there are none at all, that is, no at all.

Of the entire mass of monument pines, I found only one that grew in the forest, in the Khanty-Mansiysk district:

Given 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 much older than 200 years. At the same time, the applicants noted that this pine is a rarity for local forests. And in the local forests, with an area of at least 54 thousand hectares, there is nothing like this! There are forests, but the forest in which this pine was born has disappeared somewhere - after all, it has grown and stretched among the pines that were even older. But they are not.

And this is what will prevent those pines that grow, at least in the Kurgan forests, from continuing their lives - pines live and for 400 years, as we have seen, our conditions for them are ideal. Pine trees are very resistant to diseases, and with age, resistance only increases, fires for pine trees are not terrible - there is nothing to burn down there, ground fires of pine trees are easily tolerated, and riding ones, after all, are very rare. And, again, adult pines are more resistant to fires, so fires destroy, first of all, young growth.

Anyone, after the above, will argue with the statement that we did not have forests 150 years ago at all? There was a desert, like the Sahara - bare sand:

This is a fire pit. What we see: the forest stands on bare sand, covered only with needles with cones and a thin layer of humus - just a few centimeters. All pine forests here, and, as far as I know, in the Tyumen region, they stand on such bare sand. These are hundreds of thousands of hectares of forest, if not millions - if this is so, then the Sahara is resting! And all this was literally a hundred and fifty years ago!

The sand is blindingly white, with no impurities at all!

And it seems that you can meet such sands not only in the West Siberian Lowland. For example, there is something similar in Transbaikalia - there is a small area, only five by ten kilometers, still stands "undeveloped" taiga, and locals consider it a "Miracle of Nature."

And he was given the status of a geological reserve. We have this "miracle" - well, heaps, only this wood, in which we had an excursion, has dimensions of 50 by 60 kilometers, and no one sees any miracles and does not organize reserves - as if it should be so ...

By the way, the fact that Transbaikalia was a continuous desert in the 19th century was documented by photographers of that time, I already laid out what those places looked like before the construction of the Circum-Baikal railway. Here, for example:

A similar picture can be seen in other Siberian places, for example, a view in the "deaf taiga" on the construction of the road to Tomsk:

All of the above convincingly proves that about 150-200 years ago there were practically no forests in Russia. The question arises: were there forests in Russia before. Were! It's just that for one reason or another they were buried by the "cultural layer", like the first floors of the St. Petersburg Hermitage, the first floors in many Russian cities.

I have repeatedly written about this very "cultural layer" here, but I will not be able to resist once again publishing a photo that has recently spread around the Internet:

For rent, in Kazan "cultural layer" from the first floor, listed long years"basement" was stupidly removed by a bulldozer, without resorting to the services of archaeologists.

But bog oak, and even more so, is mined without notifying any "scientists" - "historians" and other archaeologists. Yes, such a business still exists - fossil oak mining:

But the next picture was taken in central Russia - here the river washes away the coast and centuries-old oaks, uprooted at one time, are born.

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.

First amazing fact, which was confirmed - dimension quarter network. The quarterly network, by definition, is " The system of forest quarters, created on the lands of the forest fund for the purpose of inventorying the forest fund, organizing and maintaining forestry and forest management».

The quarterly network consists of quarterly glades. This is a straight strip freed from trees and shrubs (usually up to 4 m wide), laid in the forest in order to mark the boundaries of forest quarters. During forest inventory, cutting and clearing of a quarter clearing to a width of 0.5 m is carried out, and their expansion to 4 m is carried out in subsequent years by forestry workers.

Fig.2

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

Name	Height (m)	Lifespan (years)
Plum house
Alder gray

Rowan ordinary.
Thuja western
Black alder
birch warty
Elm smooth
Fir-balsamic
Siberian fir
Common ash.
wild apple tree
Pear of usual.
Rough elm
European spruce	30-35 (60)	300-400 (500)
Common pine.	20-40 (45)	300-400 (600)
Linden small-leaved.
Forest beech
Siberian cedar pine
Prickly spruce
European larch
Siberian larch
Juniper ordinary
False-suga vulgaris
European Cedar Pine
Yew berry		1000 (2000-4000)
Pedunculate oak

* 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. 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 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. All European part marked in bold 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. 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, main reason small age of our forests. Not fungus, not bugs, not hurricanes. Our entire taiga stands on fire, and after a fire, the same thing remains as after clear-cutting. Hence the high density of crowns in almost the entire forest zone. Of course, there are exceptions - really untouched forests in the Angara region, on Valaam and, probably, somewhere else in the expanses of our vast Motherland. It's really fabulous big trees in its mass. And although these are small islands in the boundless sea of the taiga, they prove that the forest can be like that.

What is so common in forest fires that over the past 150 ... 200 years they have burned the entire forest area of 700 million hectares? Moreover, according to scientists, in a certain checkerboard pattern, observing the order, and certainly at different times?

First you need to understand the scale of these events in space and time. The fact that the main age of old trees in the bulk of the forests is at least 100 years suggests that large-scale fires, which have so rejuvenated our forests, occurred over a period of no more than 100 years. Translating into dates, for the 19th century alone. For this it was necessary to burn annually 7 million hectares of forest.

Even as a result of large-scale forest fires in the summer of 2010, which all experts called catastrophic in size, burned down only 2 million hectares. Turns out nothing so ordinary' is not in this. The last justification for such a burned past of our forests could be the tradition of slash-and-burn agriculture. But how, in this case, to explain the state of the forest in places where traditionally agriculture was not developed? In particular, in Perm region? Moreover, this method of farming involves the labor-intensive cultural use of limited areas of the forest, and not at all unrestrained arson of large areas in the hot summer season, but with a breeze.

Having gone through all the possible options, we can say with confidence that the scientific concept of " dynamics of random disturbances» nothing in real life is not substantiated, and is a myth intended to mask the inadequate state of the current forests of Russia, and hence the events that led to it.

We will have to admit that our forests are either heavily ( beyond the norm) and constantly burned throughout the 19th century ( which in itself is inexplicable and nowhere recorded), or burned out at a time as a result of some incident, from which he violently denies scientific world, having no arguments other than that in official no such thing is recorded in history.

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 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 be less labor-intensive, efficient technologies laying and maintenance of glades 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 of Belovezhskaya Pushcha about? Is it not about those heavy wounds of the earth that the young forest covers? After all, giant conflagrations by themselves don't happen...

Why are there no trees 300-500 years old in the vicinity of Tyumen? The same pines that are able to live longer, according to reference books? The question is interesting. If only because it gives rise to lovers of the mysteries of history to build interesting theories about cataclysms and even nuclear wars, which occurred in the 17-18 centuries and were deliberately erased from the annals by someone ... Ticklish questions about the age of trees correspondent website addressed to the largest Tyumen scientist in the field of dendrochronology, professor, doctor biological sciences, Head of the Biodiversity and Dynamics Sector natural complexes Institute for Research on the Development of the North of the Siberian Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences to Stanislav Arefiev.

Stanislav Arefiev can tell by tree rings not only about the age of trees, but also about climate, emergency situations and natural anomalies that have occurred in the growing area over the past centuries

The impetus for discussing such a delicate topic was another film released by the creative group "Tur-A". Amateur historians did not find trees aged 300-400-500 years near Tyumen and considered this to be confirmation of what they put forward, which wiped Tyumen off the face of the earth in the 18th century ... Here it is.

We decided to discuss the issues raised by the adventurers with an expert whose authority in the scientific world is beyond doubt. Stanislav Pavlovich devoted several decades to studying the age of trees in Western Siberia and can judge not only the age of a birch, larch, pine or cedar, but also tell about the climate and natural conditions that prevailed several hundred years ago. Arefiev not only studied trees in the south and north of the Tyumen region, in the Urals and in Central Russia, but also studied in detail the wood that was used several centuries ago for the construction of residential buildings and fortresses - samples were brought to him by archaeologists from excavation sites. And he came to the conclusion that 200-300-400 years ago the trees in the south of the region were aging, as they are now, about twice as fast as in the north ... Another scientific fact should upset the supporters of the "parallel history": the thickness of the tree is not always possible to judge its age.

Stanislav Arefiev at the microscope. 2005

— Stanislav Pavlovich, why are there no trees older than 300-400 years near Tyumen? Pines - in particular?

- In the vicinity of Tyumen, I really did not meet trees older than 250 years. The oldest pine trees, just about 250 years old - from 1770 - were noted by me in the Tarman swamps near the village of Karaganda. By the way, on poor peat soil, their diameter is only about 16 cm, and the average thickness of the rings is about 0.3 mm, which is an order of magnitude smaller than the values named by the authors of the film for the best upland pine forests ... In the city near the village. Metelevo has a single pine tree aged 220 years. In the vicinity of the village The sawmill also has a 220-year-old cedar on the edge of the Tarman swamps. The oldest birches and pines of the Old Moscow tract with a thickness of up to 85 cm are up to 126-160 years old. According to literary data, several small island pine forests up to 300 years old have been preserved in the neighboring Kurgan Pritobolye. West of Tyumen, closer to the Urals, old trees are more common. To the east, with an increase in the continentality of the climate, you will not find what is near Tyumen.

A team of Tyumen scientists during one of the many expeditions

- What is the reason?

- This situation is connected, first of all, with the fact that Tyumen is located near southern border forest zone, where conditions for tree growth are not particularly favorable. The area as a whole is water-deficient, and some years and even entire periods over the past 400 years have been very dry. This is evidenced by records in the documents of the Tobolsk Voivodeship and Tobolsk Province (T.N. Zhilina, 2009; V.S. Myglan, 2007, 2010). In particular, prolonged droughts were noted at the beginning and in the middle of the 18th century. Such droughts were always accompanied by forest fires, and if not by them, then by the massive development of forest pests, as a result of which the forest died over vast areas. According to A.A. Dunin-Gorkavich (1996), even north of Tobolsk, the forests were constantly burning, and individual fires spread along a front up to hundreds of kilometers wide. Therefore, in the vicinity of Tyumen, there are almost no spruce and other dark coniferous species that cannot endure drought and fires, but natural area in which the city is located and is called - the zone of West Siberian aspen-birch forests.

Pine is the most resistant to fires and droughts, but in such conditions the probability of its survival to a ripe old age is low. By the way, for biological reasons, in the south of the forest zone, it (and other tree species) ages 2 times faster than in the North. The limiting age of a pine tree near Tyumen, obviously, cannot exceed 400 years, even if it miraculously saved itself from the numerous cataclysms that have been in our places over the years. By the way, old log cabins with their thick, weathered logs are not necessarily built from centuries-old pines. Usually they have no more than 150 growth rings. So it was not only in our times, but also 400 years ago. A study of thick pine logs taken during the excavations of Tobolsk during its founding showed that they contained only 80-120 growth rings (A.V. Matveev brought me samples).

This spruce is about 500 years old. Poluisky reserve. Sample selection

- Interesting ... It turns out that in the north the trees live twice as long ... What are the oldest trees you have seen in Yugra and Yamal?

- With the advancement from Tyumen to the north, the age limit of trees increases, although there are not very many very old trees anywhere in Western Siberia. In the river basin I drilled cedars and pines up to 350 years old in Kondy, up to 400 years old near Khanty-Mansiysk. The oldest trees of the Tyumen region were recorded by me at the northern limit of the forest distribution - in the vicinity of the city of Nadym (cedar 500 years old), in the vicinity of the settlement located in the forest-tundra zone. Samburg (larch - 520 years old). Near Nadym, even birch reaches the age of 200 years. Dwarf birch in the tundra of Yamal lives up to 140 years. In general, in the territory of Western Siberia, the age of trees is less than in the same latitudes in the Urals or Eastern Siberia (and even in Yakutia, where larch lives up to 800 years). The reason is the flatness of the territory, open to all northern and south winds, swampiness, unhindered spread of huge fires that have not been extinguished by anyone.

— Are there centuries-old trees in Central Russia?

- Central Russia is not the southern limit of the forest zone, like Tyumen, but its middle. The conditions for the life of the forest are better there, and the trees can live there to a more advanced age. Although there are not so many such reserved places in Central Russia. Oak is the most durable there, it can grow up to 500 years or more. But there are more legends than facts. Usually, very thick stand-alone trees, which simply had excellent conditions for growing in breadth, are mistaken for old trees. There is a centuries-old dendroscale for Novgorod, built using archaeological wood. I have not heard about other reliable age-related phenomena in Central Russia. Much older trees are closer - in the mountains Southern Urals(up to 600 years). IN Eastern Europe mature trees also grow in mountainous areas.

Member of the expedition near a 520-year-old larch (Samburg, lower reaches of the Pur River)

How do you judge the age of trees? Are samples stored somewhere?

- I judge the age by the results of counting annual rings on tree cores, taken with a special Pressler borer from growing trunks. Collected thousands of samples. They are in my collection. I measure rings under a microscope. There are also photographs. Judging the age of a tree by the thickness of the trunk is a delusion. Usually the thickest trees just have wide rings, and the age is not above average. The oldest trees are usually unsightly.

- Is it possible to draw conclusions from the condition of the trees about what cataclysms they experienced in the era of their youth?

- Can. This is done by a special science - dendrochronology. In the North, cold years are especially clearly recorded, by the way, often associated with large volcanic eruptions. In the southern part of the region, near Tyumen, droughts, fires, pests are well recorded along anomalous rings, high floods and so on in river valleys. By series of rings it is possible to restore the climate. Much in such a living "chronicle of nature" depends on the place where the tree grew.

- How do you feel about the theory of "global cataclysm", which is promoted to the masses by Tyumen enthusiasts?

- What they noticed interesting moments- commendable. But people always want more. With the interpretation of some facts, they developed such a fantasy that they completely forgot about other facts, and more obvious ones. The cataclysm that enthusiasts are talking about was clearly not in Tyumen. There were less impressive cataclysms that I mentioned ... However, if you think about it, the real story is no less impressive than the longed-for sensations.

Nikita SMIRNOV,

photo from the archive of S.P. Arefiev and the Institute for the Study of the Problems of the Development of the North of the Siberian Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences

rev. dated 06.10.2014 - (photos added)

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

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. But there was a certainty that the matter was unclean.

The first surprising fact that was confirmed is the dimension of the quarterly 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”.

For example, in the forests of Udmurtia, quarters have a rectangular shape, the width of 1 quarter is 1067 meters, or exactly 1 way verst. 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 to mark out the quarterly network in versts?

Today, there are already machines for clearing clearings, 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 that it was 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.

After this fact, it is no longer so surprising that the entire quarterly network is tilted by about 10 degrees and is directed not to the geographic north pole, but, apparently, to the magnetic one (marking was carried out using a compass, not a GPS navigator), which should have been, in this time to be located approximately 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 are not overgrown. There is a windbreak, but there are no trees in the middle of the road. But in 20 years, a pine seed that accidentally fell to the ground, of which billions are sown annually, grows up to 8 meters in height. Not only are the clearings not overgrown, you will not even see stumps from periodic clearings. This is all the more striking in comparison with power lines, which are regularly cleared by special teams from overgrown shrubs and trees.

This is what typical clearings in our forests look like. Grass, sometimes bushes, but no trees. There are no signs of regular maintenance.

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.

Name	Height (m)	Duration life (years)
Plum house
Alder gray

Rowan ordinary.
Thuja western
Black alder
Birch warty
Elm smooth
Fir balsamic
Siberian fir
Common ash.
wild apple tree
Pear of usual.
Rough elm
European spruce	30-35 (60)	300-400 (500)
Common pine.	20-40 (45)	300-400 (600)
Linden small-leaved.
Forest beech
Cedar pine Siberian
Prickly spruce
Larch European
Larch Siberian
Juniper ordinary
Liesuga ordinary
Cedar pine European
Yew berry		1000 (2000-4000)
Pedunculate oak

* 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 specimens (in Udmurtia - 2 pines) that reach 1.2 m, but their age is also not more than 200 years.

Wheeler Peak (4,011 m above sea level), New Mexico, is home to bristlecone pines, one of the longest-lived trees on earth. The age of the oldest specimens is estimated at 4,700 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.

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 of them are derived forests that have formed on the site of primary forests as a result of logging, clearing, and 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 the middle lane are clearly covered by 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 with young ones ... "

All this is called "the 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 they have 150…200 years burned the entire forest in 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 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 burned down. It turns out that there is nothing "so ordinary" in this. The last justification for such a burned past of our forests could be the tradition of slash-and-burn agriculture. But how, in this case, to explain the state of the forest in places where traditionally agriculture was not developed? In particular, in the Perm region? Moreover, this method of farming involves the labor-intensive cultural use of limited areas of the forest, and not at all unrestrained arson of large areas in the hot summer season, but with a breeze.

Having gone through all the possible options, we can say with confidence that the scientific concept of “the 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 it.

We will have to admit that our forests either burned intensively (beyond any 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 of some incident, which is why the scientific world violently denies, having no no arguments, except that nothing of the kind is recorded in the official history.

To all this, one can add that there were clearly fabulously large trees in the old natural forests. It has already been said about the reserved surviving areas of the taiga. It is worth giving an example in terms of deciduous forests. The Nizhny Novgorod region and Chuvashia have a very favorable climate for deciduous trees. There are a lot of oak trees growing there. But you, again, will not find old copies. The same 150 years old, no older. Older single copies are all over the place. Here is a photo of the largest oak tree in Belarus. It grows in Belovezhskaya Pushcha. 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.

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. This indicates the composition of the former oak forest, the remains of which lie at the bottom. In the Gomel region there is the river Besed, the bottom of which is dotted with bog oak, although now there are only water meadows and fields around. 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.

- there is a developed block 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.

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.

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 "the dynamics of random disturbances." This theory proposes that forest fires are 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 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, just as neither the Great Tartary nor the Great Northern Way fit in there. Atlantis with the fallen moon didn't even fit. The one-time destruction of 200...400 million hectares of forest is even easier to imagine, and to hide, than the unquenchable, 100-year-old fire proposed for consideration by science.

So what is the age-old sadness of Belovezhskaya Pushcha about? Is it not about those heavy wounds of the earth that the young forest covers? After all, giant conflagrations do not happen by themselves ...

basis: article by A. Artemyev
photo by alexfl

Old women on the Volga

Torzhok

Mozhaisk

Suzdal, r. Kamenka

Vladimir

Surprising as it may sound, not only cities, but also suburban landscapes are overgrown.

source of the Volga

R. Koloch near Borodino

environs of Pereslavl-Zalessky