Historical avenues of research in Russian forest typology: ecological, phytocoenotic, genetic, and dynamic classifications

Abstract

The Russian Federation is one of many countries that have signed the Montreal Protocol and Pan-European Forest Process. These initiatives are aimed at harmonizing national forest inventory systems with criteria and indicators for sustainable forest management. In Russia, the classification of forest type is at the heart of national forest inventory systems. For various historical reasons, Russian scientific advancements in the field of forest typology remain little known in the rest of the world. This paper is aimed at addressing this deficiency. Here, we provide an overview of the main trends in the field of forest typology studies in the previous political states of the Russian Empire, the Soviet Union, and the Russian Federation from the end of the nineteenth century to the beginning of the twenty-first century. We detail the principles that formed the basis of the most significant forest type classifications. We also perform similarity and differences analyses comparing approaches used by members of different scientific schools in the field of forest typology. The historical relationship between ecological, phytocoenotic, genetic, and dynamic forest type classifications are discussed as well as the reasons for the prevalence of certain forest type classifications in different regions of Russia.