Impacts of Global Climate Change on Duration of Logging Season in Siberian Boreal Forests

Anna V Chugunkova,Anton I Pyzhev

doi:10.3390/f11070756

Abstract

In Siberia, most boreal forests are located in an area with relatively moist forest soils, which makes logging activities possible exclusively during the frost period with a permanent snow cover and stable sub-zero temperatures. As the global climate is experiencing a trend towards warming, it is reasonable to suppose that the duration of the logging season might shorten over time, influencing the economic potential of Siberian forests. To test this hypothesis, we created a concept for calculating the duration of the logging season, taking into account the economic and climatic peculiarities of doing forest business in these territories. Using the long-run daily-observed climatic data, we calculated the duration of the logging season for eight representative stations in Krasnoyarsk Krai (Yeniseysk, Boguchany, Achinsk, and Minusinsk) and Irkutsk Oblast (Bratsk, Kirensk, Tulun, and Yerbogachen) in 1966–2018. We found strong evidence of logging season duration shortening for almost all considered stations, with an uneven effect on the start and end boundaries of the season. Climate warming has almost no effect on the start date of the season in winter, but it significantly shifts the boundaries of the season end in spring. Using the autoregressive-integrated-moving average modeling (ARIMA) models, we demonstrated that, in the near future, the trends of the gradual shortening of the logging season will hold for the most part of the considered stations. The most pronounced effect is observed for the Achinsk station, where the logging season will shorten from 148.4 ± 17.3 days during the historical sample (1966–2018) to 136.2 ± 30 days in 2028, which reflects global warming trend patterns. From an economic perspective, a shorter duration of the logging season means fewer wood stocks available for cutting, which would impact the ability of companies to enact their logging plans and lead them to suffer losses in the future. To avoid losses, Siberian forest firms will have to adapt to these changes by redefining their economic strategies in terms of intensifying logging operations.

Highlights

IntroductionForests are a primary source of vital environmental services that are delivered to human society
Forests are a primary source of vital environmental services that are delivered to human society.Being a part of the biogeochemical carbon cycle and by uptaking CO2 during the photosynthetic process, forests contribute to climate change mitigation, and serving as a carbon sink
Climate change has become a major topic of study throughout many scientific domains, since there is a consensus that this problem is one of the main global challenges for the human civilization of future decades

Summary

Introduction

Forests are a primary source of vital environmental services that are delivered to human society. Being a part of the biogeochemical carbon cycle and by uptaking CO2 during the photosynthetic process, forests contribute to climate change mitigation, and serving as a carbon sink. They supply multiple ecosystem services and non-timber products such as mushrooms, berries, and medicinal plants [1]. The ability of forests to sustain these services is changing due to climate change. According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the second half. Forests 2020, 11, 756 of the 20th century was the warmest in the last millennia. The global average surface temperature has already gone up by 0.85 ◦ C since the industrial revolution and has continued to rise [2]

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Conclusion