Abstract
Boreal forest areas in the Russian Far East contained very large intact forests. This particular area is considered one of the most productive and diverse forests in the boreal biome of the world, and it is also home to many endangered species. Zeya State Nature Reserve is located at the southern margin of the boreal forest area in the Russian Far East and has rich fauna and flora. However, the forest in the region faced large-scale forest fires and clearcutting for timber recently. The information of disturbances is rarely understood. This study aimed to explore the effects of disturbance and forest dynamics around the reserve. Our study used two-year overlaid Landsat images from Landsat 5 Thematic Mapper (TM) and 8 Operational Land Imager (OLI), to generate forest-cover-change maps of 1988–1999, 1999–2010, and 2010–2016. In this paper, we analyze the direction of forest successional stages, to demonstrate the effectiveness of this protected area in terms of preventing human-based deforestation on the vegetation indices. The vegetation indices included the normalized burn ratio (NBR), the normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI), and the normalized difference water index (NDWI). The study provided information on the pattern of forest-cover change and disturbance area around the reserve. The NDWI was used to differentiate between water and non-water areas. The mean values of NBR and NDVI were calculated and determine the forest successional stages between burn, vegetation recovery, grass, mixed forest, oak forest, and birch and larch forest. The accuracy was assessed by using field measurements, field photos, and high-resolution images as references. Overall, our classification results have high accuracy for all three periods. The most disturbed area occurred during 2010–2016. The reserve was highly protected, with no human-disturbance activity. However, large areas from fire disturbance were found (137 km2) during 1999–2010. The findings also show a large area of disturbance, mostly located outside of the reserve. Mixed disturbance increased to almost 50 km2 during 2010–2016, in the buffer zone and outside of the reserve. We recommend future works to apply our methods to other ecosystems, to compare the forest dynamics and disturbance inside and outside the protected area.
Highlights
Boreal forests are considered the largest ecoregion on Earth
More than 35 species of fauna and flora are listed on the Red Book of Russia, and 10 species of bird and 1 species of mammal are on the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Red List [28]
The analysis of successional stages based on normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI) and normalized burn ratio index (NBR) values provided important insights into forest-cover-change patterns inside the Zeya State Nature Reserve, in the buffer zone, and outside the reserve, from the periods of 1988–1999, 1999–2010, and
Summary
Boreal forests are considered the largest ecoregion on Earth This particular area is well-known for its productivity and diverse forest types which is home to many endangered species. About 20% of the world’s boreal forests are located in Eastern Siberia and the Russian Far East affected by natural disturbances and human activities [1]. Deforestation and degradation are expected to expand in the Central Siberia [2], the Eastern Siberia, and the Russian Far East [3]. More than 70% of forest fire in Russia are caused by human activities, 11% by lightning, 10% by agricultural prescribed burning [5,6]. Road building and bridge construction were expanded in Siberia and the Russian Far East, which has a tendency to cause the area more flammable when the weather is dry and warm. Mining and prescribed burning are the causes of huge fire area in the 2015 Russia wildfire event and 2003
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