Modern forest climatopes and forest typological zoning of the northern part of European Russia

Abstract

The article considers the current problem of modern scheme of Russia forest zoning designing and methods of forest typological assessment of forest climatopes and forest typological zoning. For the northern part of European Russia at the beginning of the XXI century, the climates of forest thermotopes, contrastotopes and hygrotopes, their spatial distribution, geographical stretching and zoning has been determined by classical forest typological methods. It has been ascertained four zones of forest climatopes, four zones of continentality (zones of forest contrastotopes), one of that has separate semienclave from the White and Barents Seas, and five zones of forest hygrotopes (one of that is disjunctive). A new, previously undescribed climate of the contrastotop of the mild (seaside) forest climate has been identified, requiring an assessment of the forest-growing effect. It has been established that the modern zones of forest thermo-, contrast- and hygrotopes have a different nature of geographical extent, and modern boundaries of zones have characterized by dynamical mobility and indefinite form in most cases, especially boundaries of forest hygrotopes climate zones. The modern forest typological zoning of the northern part of European Russia is proposed according to three equivalent climatic regimes and it has established forest typological regions with maximal area. In connection with complicate of boundaries of zones character it is established that the greatest diversity of forest typological areas are between boundaries of thermotopes and hygrotopes climate zones and from White and Barents Seas and Ural Mountains. The question is raised about the assessment of the actual existence of some selected local forest typological areas as geographical ecotones.