[M-IS01] Environmental, socio-economic, and climatic changes in Northern Eurasia

[MIS01-P05] Fire and Logging Disturbances in the Angara Region, Central Siberia

*Evgeny Shvetsov¹, Elena Kukavskaya¹, Tatiana Shestakova², Brendan Rogers² (1.V.N. Sukachev Institute of Forest of the Siberian Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences, 2.Woodwell Climate Research Center)

Keywords:Siberia, wildfires, clear cuts

Intensification of anthropogenic activities, logging and forest fires, together with climate change, can lead to significant disturbances in the functioning of boreal forests. In Russia, several million hectares of forested lands, mostly in Siberia, are exposed to fires annually. Apart from wildfires logging also is an important disturbing factor in several Siberian regions such as Irkutsk oblast and Krasnoyarsk krai. The territory of the Angara region located in the Central Siberia has experienced significant disturbances caused by fires and logging during the several past decades. Here we estimated fire and logging disturbances between 2002 and 2020 using MODIS and Landsat data. The total area disturbed by fires and loggings reached almost 45% of the region’s area. More than 4.1 million hectares were affected by wildfires with mean annual fire disturbance rate increased twice during the last two decades: from 1% to 2% of the total region’s area. The bulk of wildfires (more than 70%) ignited within 15 km from anthropogenic features such as settlements, roads and logged sites. Multiple successive disturbances were quite common in the study area, affecting about 650 thousand hectares between 2002 and 2020. Most of these disturbances were multiple fire events, affecting 514 thousand hectares (5% of the study area). We also found a shift to a longer fire season from 140±11 days in between 2002 and 2010 to 176±20 days in 2011 – 2020.


This study was supported by the Russian Foundation for Basic Research and Krasnoyarsk Regional Fund for Support of Scientific and Technical Activity project 20-44-242004.