Exposing alternative history - why there are no old trees in the forests. And the forest is mysterious. In Russia there are no trees older than 200 years.

Some time ago I wondered why in our forests there are no thousand-year-old sorcerer oaks, the images of which emerge so vividly from us. genetic memory when we read what has come down to us folk tales. Where are those dense forests that we all imagine so well? Let us remember the lines of V.S. Vysotsky, and these same thickets immediately appear before your eyes:

In the reserved and dense terrible Murom forests
All kinds of evil spirits roam in clouds and sow fear in passers-by,
Howls howl that your dead,
If there are nightingales there, then they are robbers.
It's scary, it's creepy!

In the enchanted swamps there live kikimoras,
They will tickle you to the point of hiccups and drag you to the bottom.
Whether you're on foot or on horseback, they'll steal you
And the goblin just roam around the forest.
It's scary, it's creepy!

And the man, merchant and warrior found himself in a dense forest,
Who for what purpose: who was drunk, and who foolishly climbed into the thicket.
Did they disappear for a reason or without a reason?
As soon as we saw them all, it was as if they had disappeared.
It's scary, it's creepy!

Something similar appears in the famous song about hares:

In the dark blue forest, where the aspen trees tremble,
Where leaves fall from witch oaks
In the clearing, hares mowed the grass at midnight
And at the same time they chanted strange words:

We have a business - at the most terrible hour we mow the magical grass.”

And the sorcerer oaks whisper something in the fog,
Someone's shadows rise by the filthy swamps,
Hares mow the grass, tryn-grass in the clearing
And out of fear they sing the song faster and faster:

“But we don’t care, but we don’t care, let us be afraid of the wolf and the owl,
We have a business - at the most terrible hour we mow the magical grass.”

In general, I immersed myself in this topic, and it turned out that I was not the only one who asked this question. I discovered many interesting theories, ranging from continental floods to the nuclear war of 1812 caused by alien invaders. In general, I had a lot of fun))) Meanwhile, the fact is a fact - in the first old photos of the construction of railways and other objects in the vastness of Russia there are no old forests! There is a young forest that is much younger than what we see around us today. Even the photo from the site of the “Tunguska meteorite” does not impress with the thickness of the trunks. There are matchstick-thin trunks of approximately the same thickness. No sorcerer oaks for you. At the same time, in some European countries and in America, everything is fine with oaks and other trees (for example, sequoias) ...

The official version claims that forests do not live up to their full potential mature age due to periodic fires that occur here and there throughout Siberia. But it’s still strange that throughout Russia there was no photograph with a truly dense forest, with a thousand-year-old oak grove (and oaks live for 1500 years). In addition, from the photographs, one gets the feeling that the forests are all approximately the same age, which, in theory, should not be the case in the case of periodic relatively local fires.

Despite my suspicions, I admit that the age of the already grown forest is difficult to determine from photographs. We only distinguish a forest from young growth, and when it is already more than 40 years old, then without a specific measurement of the diameters of the trunks, who knows how old it is, 50, 80 or 100. And from here we can assume that any forest in Siberia burns more often than once every 150-200 years. But in the west of the Moscow region there have been no large forest fires for a long time.

Let's look at the forest near my dacha. He looks no more than 100 years old. Let's see what it was like here in the 1770s. Let's open a fragment of the survey map of the Zvenigorod district of the Moscow region. I marked the location of our dachas with a blue square:

The stripes are arable land. It is noteworthy that to the right of the dachas we see a forest, but below - arable land. Where the forest now grows, there was arable land, and the forest is indicated on the site of the current field, which is located on our side of Moscow. It is interesting that even the Pokrovka River, which now begins in the field near the White House and goes through the forest, on this map begins in the forest, and then goes among the arable lands. Let's trace the condition of this area on other maps.

Another survey map from the same period. If the dotted line marks the boundaries of the forest, then, surprisingly, the forest is present on it in almost the same configuration as it is now.

Our ravine with the forked tongue is not visible here. It looks like the wrong piece of card is inserted in this place. Above you can see a similar forked ravine, but this is not our ravine, but the one located behind the Vesna SNT. I determined the location of our dachas by superimposing the previous map on this one - all other objects more or less coincided, which means the location of the current location of the dachas was determined correctly.

The village of Pokrovskoye on these two maps is located very close to our ravine. Maps at that time were compiled by eye, so such strong distortions were normal. Based on this, I can assume that the arable lands on the previous map are not where our forest is now, but near the village of Pokrovskoye, but due to severe distortions it turned out that they stuck almost closely to our ravine. In addition, the forest on the first map to the right of the ravine is shown rather conditionally, so it is possible that the distance to it was greater, and the field could have been deployed incorrectly. In this sense, the second map seems more accurate to me. There, the boundaries of the forest are clearly marked, just like the Pokrovka River.

Thus, based on the second map, we can conclude that in the 1770s the forest grew in approximately the same place as now (plus it also grew in the area where the White House now stands). That is, 250 years ago there was a forest here too. But where are the 250-year-old trees then? No.

Let's look at more recent maps. Maybe the forest was being cut down there, and this was somehow reflected in them?

Schubert's map, based on surveys that took place in 1838-1839. The most accurate and detailed map of this area for all time, republished with infrastructural additions for almost the next century. The so-called “one-layout”, that is, there is 1 verst in 1 inch (1 cm = 420 m). Here I doubled the scale for convenience:

The map was compiled using scientific methods, so there are practically no distortions. We see the same picture that we saw on survey maps created 50-70 years earlier. That is, all this time the forest remained in its place.

Another map, based on surveys that took place a little later, in 1852-1853:

Although this is more fresh map, but it is less detailed. There is no Davydkovo-Burtsevo road on it. But the relief is better designed. For 10 new years, nothing happened to the forest either.

Wow! We see our forest clearing! That is, immediately after the revolution it already existed! The forest is still there and has not disappeared anywhere. It has been standing for 150 years!

Let's continue observing. During the Great Patriotic War A German spy plane took aerial photographs of our area in 1942, on which we can see not only the presence of the forest, but also its condition:

What do we see? The Kiev highway appeared, but the forest almost exactly corresponds to what we saw on the maps earlier. However we see huge clearing on the right, which cuts into the forest in a triangle from the side of the Kyiv highway, as well as a completely bald clearing a little to the left. Our forest clearing is also visible, which connects the nose of the white field with a bald clearing near the highway. I note that if you didn’t know that there was a clearing in that place, it would be quite difficult to identify it on the spot today, although there is a subtle change in the character of the forest.

Photo from an American spy satellite in 1966. 25 years have passed, and the deforestation is almost unnoticeable:

But the open woodland on the right at the end of the field has now been completely cut down and turned into a new field, and the edge of our forest on the side of the field has been slightly trimmed.

An image from 1972, also from an American spy satellite:

There are no changes in the forest, but it is clear that instead of our ravine a pond has appeared, blocked by a dam, and dirt roads became more dispersed.

The boundaries of the forest are the same as in the 1972 photo. The forest is already 200 years old, but there are still no old trees in it! By the way, the above map in paper form hung on my wall in the 80s. It gave me great pleasure to see our garden plots there!

Now let's look at Google satellite images last period. Early spring 2006:

Compared to 1966-1972, the forest has not changed much due to the clearing of the oil product pipeline laid in 1974 (visible especially well in the forest south of the dachas). This photo is also notable for the fact that we can clearly see an evergreen pine forest piece in it (in the upper right corner forest area). In the summer photo of the same year it is no longer so noticeable:

It is interesting to see a winter photo from February 2009. The only winter photo of our dachas in the entire history of Google cartography:

Now, pay attention! A photo from 2012, the forest is 240 years old and still in order:

Here's a photo from 2013! Part of the forest has already been cut down! The felling took place in winter with huge tracked vehicles, their traces are visible:

At the same time, the active expansion phase of Vnukovo Airport began (seen on the right).

And finally, a modern shot from 2017 (though already from Yandex). The clearing is overgrown with bushes except for the plateau on the right:

Thus, despite such attractive theories about a cataclysm erasing it from our memory for some reason, I can assume that our forest was still periodically gradually cut down and then grew back. The same can be assumed about the entire Moscow region. Behind last centuries forests around cities were actively cut down, grew again and were cut down again. It is reasonable to assume that Siberian forests were also cut down, but on a large-scale industrial scale. In addition, they periodically burned. In previous centuries, when they were not extinguished, they could burn for a very long time until they were extinguished by rain, which means it becomes clear why they are all so young.

But why don't forests burn on the American continent? Perhaps the climate there is different, more intense rains who immediately extinguish a tree set on fire by lightning?

But then the question is, why do we so easily imagine these thousand-year-old oak forests, as if we have a memory of them somewhere deep in the subconscious? Why are dense forests so often described in our fairy tales? So, several centuries ago they still existed? Maybe. After all, there were few people, there was no large-scale industrial logging yet, and the eastern regions of Russia with a more pronounced continental climate. Well, all that remains is to regret that those fabulous times have already passed...

By the way, if you are prone to conspiracy theories, read this person, it’s very interesting:

Why are there no trees 300-500 years old in the vicinity of Tyumen? The same pines that can live longer, according to reference books? The question is interesting. If only because it gives lovers of the mysteries of history a reason to build interesting theories about cataclysms and even nuclear wars that occurred in the 17th and 18th centuries and were deliberately erased from the chronicles by someone... Tricky questions about the age of trees correspondent website addressed to the largest Tyumen scientist in the field of dendrochronology, professor, doctor biological sciences, Head of the Biodiversity and Dynamics Sector natural complexes Institute for Research on Problems of Development of the North SB RAS to Stanislav Arefiev.

Stanislav Arefiev can use tree rings to tell not only about the age of trees, but also about climate, emergency situations and natural anomalies, which occurred in the growing area over the past centuries

The impetus for discussing such a sensitive topic was another film released by the creative group “Tur-A”. Amateur historians did not find trees 300-400-500 years old near Tyumen and considered this to be confirmation of their hypothesis, which wiped Tyumen off the face of the earth in the 18th century... Here it is.

We decided to discuss the issues raised by the adventurers with an expert whose authority in the scientific world is beyond doubt. Stanislav Pavlovich devoted several decades to studying the age of trees in Western Siberia and by the growth rings can judge not only the age of birch, larch, pine or cedar, but also tell about the climate and natural conditions, reigned several hundred years ago. Arefiev not only studied trees in the south and north of the Tyumen region, in the Urals and Central Russia, but also examined in detail the wood that was used several centuries ago for the construction of residential buildings and fortresses - samples were brought to him by archaeologists from excavation sites. And he came to the conclusion that 200-300-400 years ago, trees in the south of the region were aging, as they are now, about twice as fast as in the north... One more scientific fact should disappoint supporters of “parallel history”: the thickness of a tree cannot always be used to judge its age.

Stanislav Arefiev at the microscope. 2005

— Stanislav Pavlovich, why are there no trees older than 300-400 years near Tyumen? Pines in particular?

— In the vicinity of Tyumen, I really haven’t seen trees older than 250 years. The oldest pines, about 250 years old - from 1770 - were noted by me in the Tarman swamps near the village of Karaganda. By the way, on a meager peat soil their diameter is only about 16 cm, and the average thickness of the rings is about 0.3 mm, which is an order of magnitude less than the values ​​​​named by the authors of the film for the best upland pine forests... Within the city limits near the village. Metelevo there is a single pine tree 220 years old. In the vicinity of the village. The sawmill also noted a cedar tree on the edge of the Tarman swamps, which is 220 years old. The oldest birches and pines of the Old Moscow Highway, with a thickness of up to 85 cm, are up to 126-160 years old. According to literary data, in the neighboring Kurgan Tobol region several small island pine forests up to 300 years old have been preserved. To the west of Tyumen, closer to the Urals, old trees are more common. To the east, with the increasing continentality of the climate, you will not find what is near Tyumen.

A team of Tyumen scientists during one of the many expeditions

- What is the reason?

— This situation is connected, first of all, with the fact that Tyumen is located close southern border forest zone where conditions for tree growth are not particularly favorable. The region as a whole is moisture-deficient, and some years and even entire periods over the past 400 years have been very dry. This is evidenced by records in documents of the Tobolsk Voivodeship and the Tobolsk Province (T.N. Zhilina, 2009; V.S. Myglan, 2007, 2010). In particular, prolonged droughts were noted at the beginning and in the middle of the 18th century. Such droughts were always accompanied by forest fires, and if not by them, then by the massive development of forest pests, as a result of which the forest died over vast areas. According to A.A. Dunin-Gorkavich (1996), even north of Tobolsk, forests were constantly burning, and individual fires spread with a front up to hundreds of kilometers wide. Therefore, in the vicinity of Tyumen there are almost no spruce and other dark coniferous species that cannot withstand drought and fires, and natural area in which the city is located is called the zone of West Siberian aspen-birch forests.

Pine is the most resistant to fires and droughts, but in such conditions the probability of its survival to a ripe old age is low. By the way, for biological reasons, in the south of the forest zone it (and other tree species) ages 2 times faster than in the North. The maximum age of a pine tree near Tyumen, obviously, cannot exceed 400 years, even if it were miraculously saved from the numerous disasters that have occurred in our area over the years. By the way, old log houses with their thick, weathered logs are not necessarily built from centuries-old pine trees. Usually they have no more than 150 growth rings. This was the case not only in our times, but also 400 years ago. A study of thick pine logs taken during excavations of Tobolsk from the period of its foundation showed that they contain only 80-120 growth rings (samples were brought to me by A.V. Matveev).

This spruce is about 500 years old. Poluisky reserve. Sample selection

- Interesting... It turns out that in the north trees live twice as long... What are the oldest trees you have seen in Ugra and Yamal?

— As you move north from Tyumen, the maximum age of trees increases, although there are not very many very old trees anywhere in Western Siberia. In the river basin I drilled cedars and pines up to 350 years old near Khanty-Mansiysk, and up to 400 years old near Khanty-Mansiysk. I recorded the oldest trees in the Tyumen region at the northern limit of the forest distribution - in the vicinity of the city of Nadym (cedar 500 years old), in the vicinity of the village located in the forest-tundra zone. Samburg (larch - 520 years). Near Nadym, even birch trees reach the age of 200 years. The dwarf birch tree in the tundra of Yamal lives up to 140 years. In general, in Western Siberia the age of trees is less than in the same latitudes in the Urals or Eastern Siberia (and even in Yakutia, where larch lives up to 800 years). The reason is the flatness of the territory, open to all northern and southern winds, swampiness, and the unimpeded spread of huge fires that have not been extinguished by anyone.

— Are there centuries-old trees in Central Russia?

— Central Russia is not the southern limit of the forest zone, like Tyumen, but its middle. Conditions for forest life are better there, and trees can live there to an older age. Although such protected areas There are not many left in Central Russia. Oak is the most durable there; it can grow for up to 500 years or more. But there are more legends than facts. Usually, very thick, free-standing trees that simply had excellent conditions for growing in width are mistaken for old trees. There is a centuries-old dendroscale for Novgorod, built using archaeological wood. I have not heard of other reliable age-related phenomena in Central Russia. There are much older trees closer - in the mountains Southern Urals(up to 600 years). IN Eastern Europe mature trees also grow in mountainous areas.

Participant of the expedition near a larch tree, which is 520 years old (Samburg, lower reaches of the Pur River)

— How do you judge the age of trees? Are samples stored somewhere?

— I judge the age based on the results of counting growth rings on wood cores taken from growing trunks with a special Pressler drill. Thousands of samples have been collected. They are kept in my collection. I measure the rings under a microscope. There are also photographs. Judging the age of a tree by the thickness of its trunk is a misconception. Usually the thickest trees simply have wide rings and are no more than average in age. The oldest trees are usually unsightly.

— Is it possible to draw conclusions from the state of the trees about what cataclysms they survived in the era of their youth?

- Can. This is the subject of a special science—dendrochronology. In the North, cold years are especially clearly recorded, by the way, often associated with large volcanic eruptions. In the southern part of the region, near Tyumen, droughts, fires, pests are clearly recorded along the anomalous rings; in river valleys - high floods, etc. Using a series of rings, the climate can be reconstructed. Much in such a living “chronicle of nature” depends on the place where the tree grew.

— How do you feel about the theory of “global cataclysm”, which is being promoted to the masses by Tyumen enthusiasts?

“The fact that they noticed interesting points is commendable.” But people always want more. With the interpretation of some facts, their fantasy played out so much that they completely forgot about other facts, moreover, more obvious ones. The cataclysm that enthusiasts talk about clearly did not happen in Tyumen. There were cataclysms that were not so impressive that I mentioned... However, if you think about it, real story is no less impressive than the coveted sensations.

Nikita SMIRNOV,

photo from the archive of S.P. Arefiev and the Institute for Research on Problems of Northern Development SB RAS

In Russia, the Conservation Council natural heritage nations in the Federation Council Federal Assembly The Russian Federation has opened the program “Trees - Monuments of Living Nature”. Enthusiasts all over the country search with fire during the day for trees two hundred years old and older. Trees that are two hundred years old are unique! So far, about 200 of all breeds and varieties have been discovered throughout the country. Moreover, most of the trees found have nothing to do with the forest, like this 360-year-old pine. This is determined not only by its modern proud loneliness, but also by the shape of the crown.

Thanks to this program, we are able to fairly objectively assess the age of our forests.
Here are two examples of applications from the Kurgan region.

This is on this moment, the oldest tree in the Kurgan region, whose age is set by experts at 189 years - slightly short of 200 years. Pine grows in Ozerninsko Bor near the Sosnovaya Roshcha sanatorium. And the forest itself, naturally, is much younger: the pine tree grew long years alone, as can be seen from the shape of the tree’s crown.
Another application was received from the Kurgan region, claiming a pine tree over 200 years old:

This tree ended up on the territory of the arboretum - it was preserved along with some other local species that grew on this territory before the establishment of the arboretum. The arboretum was founded when a tree nursery was organized for the Forestry School, created in 1893. A forest school and a forest nursery were necessary to train forestry specialists who were to carry out work on forest allotment and assessment during the construction of the Kurgan section of the Trans-Siberian railway at the end of the 19th century.
Note: the forest school and tree nursery were founded about 120 years ago and their purpose was to evaluate forest lands that already existed by that time.
These two trees grow in the Kurgan region, this is the south of Western Siberia - it borders on the Chelyabinsk, Tyumen, Omsk regions, and in the south on Kazakhstan.
Let us pay attention: both trees began their life not in the forest, but in an open field - this is evidenced by the shape of their crown and the presence of branches extending almost from the very base. Pines growing in the forest are a bare, straight whip, “without a hitch,” with a panicle on the top, like this group of pines on the left side of the photo:

Here it is, straight as a string, without knots, the trunk of a pine tree that grew next to other pines:

Yes, these pines grew in the middle of the forest, which was here until the early 60s of the last century, before a sand quarry was organized here, from which sand was washed with a dredge onto the highway under construction, which is now called “Baikal”. This place is located a kilometer from the northern outskirts of Kurgan.
Now let’s make a foray into the Kurgan forest and look at the “structure” of a typical West Siberian forest on the ground. Let's move a kilometer away from the lake into the thick of the "ancient" forest.
In the forest you constantly come across trees like this pine in the center:

This is not a withered tree, its crown is full of life:

This is an old tree that began its life in an open field, then other pines began to grow around and the branches from below began to dry; the same tree is visible on the left in the background of the frame.

The girth of the trunk at the chest level of an adult is 230 centimeters, i.e. trunk diameter is about 75 centimeters. For a pine tree, this is a significant size, so with a trunk thickness of 92 cm, experts established the age of the tree in the next photo at 426 years

But in the Kurgan region, perhaps, there are more favorable conditions for pine trees - the pine from the Ozerninsky forest, which was discussed above, has a trunk thickness of 110 centimeters and is only 189 years old. I also found several freshly cut stumps with a diameter of about 70 cm and counted 130 annual rings. Those. The pines from which the forest came are about 130-150 years old.
If things continue to be the same as they have been for the last 150 years - the forests will grow and gain strength - then it is not difficult to predict how the children from these photographs will see this forest in 50-60 years, when they bring their grandchildren to these, for example, pine trees (fragment the photo above is of a pine tree by the lake).

You understand: pine trees at 200 years old will cease to be rare, in the Kurgan region alone there will be countless of them, pine trees over 150 years old, grown in the middle of the forest, with a trunk as straight as a telegraph pole without knots, will grow everywhere, but now there are none of them at all, that is, no at all.
Of the entire mass of pine monuments, I found only one that grew in the forest, in the Khanty-Mansiysk Okrug:

Considering the harsh climate of those places (equated to the regions of the Far North), with a trunk thickness of 66 cm, it is fair to consider this tree to be much older than 200 years. At the same time, the applicants noted that this pine is rare for local forests. And in the local forests, with an area of ​​at least 54 thousand hectares, there is nothing like that! There are forests, but the forest in which this pine was born has disappeared somewhere - after all, it grew and stretched among pines that were even older. But there are none.
And this is what will prevent those pines that grow, at least in the Kurgan forests, from continuing their lives - pines live and for 400 years, as we have seen, we have ideal conditions for them. Pine trees are very resistant to diseases, and with age, resistance only increases, fires are not terrible for pine trees - there is nothing to burn down there, pine trees can easily tolerate ground fires, but high fires are still very rare. And, again, mature pines are more resistant to fires, so fires destroy, first of all, young trees.
After the above, will anyone argue with the statement that we had no forests at all 150 years ago? There was a desert, like the Sahara - bare sand:

This is a firebreak. What we see: the forest stands on bare sand, covered only with pine needles with cones and a thin layer of humus - just a few centimeters. All our pine forests, and, as far as I know, in the Tyumen region, stand on such bare sand. This is hundreds of thousands of hectares of forest, if not millions - if this is so, then the Sahara is resting! And all this was literally some hundred and fifty years ago!
The sand is dazzlingly white, without any impurities at all!
And it seems that such sands can be found not only in the Western Siberian Lowland. For example, there is something similar in Transbaikalia - there is a small area there, only five by ten kilometers, that still stands in “undeveloped” taiga, and the locals consider it a “Miracle of Nature.”

And it was given the status of a geological reserve. We have this “miracle” - well, there are heaps, only this forest in which we spent an excursion measures 50 by 60 kilometers, and no one sees any miracles and no one organizes nature reserves - as if this is how it should be...
By the way, the fact that Transbaikalia was a complete desert in the 19th century was documented by photographers of that time; I have already posted what those places looked like before the construction of the Circum-Baikal Railway. Here, for example:

A similar picture can be seen in other Siberian places, for example, a view in the “dead taiga” during the construction of the road to Tomsk:

All of the above convincingly proves: about 150-200 years ago there were practically no forests in Russia. The question arises: were there forests in Russia before? Were! It’s just that, for one reason or another, they ended up buried in the “cultural layer”, like the first floors of the St. Petersburg Hermitage, the first floors in many Russian cities.
I have already written here several times about this very “cultural layer”, but I can’t resist once again publishing a photo that recently spread around the Internet:

It seems that in Kazan the “cultural layer” from the first floor, which was considered a “basement” for many years, was stupidly removed with a bulldozer, without resorting to the services of archaeologists.
But bog oak, and even more so, is mined without notifying any “scientists” - “historians” and other archaeologists. Yes, such a business still exists - the extraction of fossil oak:

But the next photo was taken in central Russia- here the river washes away the bank and centuries-old oak trees, uprooted at one time, appear:

The author of the photo writes that the oak trees look perfect - smooth, slender, which indicates that they grew in the forest. And the age, with that thickness (the cover set for the scale is 11 cm) is much older than 200 years.
And again, as Newton said, I am not inventing hypotheses: let the “historians” explain why trees older than 150 years are found in large numbers only under the “cultural layer”.

http://rosdrevo.ru/ - All-Russian program "Trees - monuments of living nature"

Http://www.clumba.su/mne-ponyatna-tvoya-vekovaya-pechal/ - I understand your age-old sadness...

Http://sibved.livejournal.com/153207.html - Overgrowing Russia

Http://www.clumba.su/kulturnye-sloi-evrazii/ - about “cultural layers”

Http://vvdom.livejournal.com/332212.html - "Cultural layers" of St. Petersburg

Http://sibved.livejournal.com/150384.html - Chara desert

Http://humus.livejournal.com/2882049.html - Road construction work. Tomsk region. 1909 Part 1

Http://rosdrevo.ru/index.php?option=com_adsmanager&page=show_ad&adid=77&catid=1&Itemid=85 - pine in the Ozerninsky forest in the Kurgan region

Http://www.bogoak.biz/ - extraction of bog oak

Http://sibved.livejournal.com/167844.html - oaks under clay

Http://sibved.livejournal.com/167844.html?thread=4458660#t4458660 - oak trees in Sharovsky Park

Http://sibved.livejournal.com/159295.html - Krasnoyarsk in the past

Http://sibved.livejournal.com/73000.html - Siberia during development

Http://www.skyscrapercity.com/showthread.php?s=bbcef0f3187e3211e4f2690c6548c4ef&t=1484553 - photo of old Krasnoyarsk

Http://rosdrevo.ru/index.php?option=com_adsmanager&page=show_ad&adid=79&catid=1&Itemid=85 - pine planted in the arboretum at the tree nursery on Prosvet in the Kurgan region

Http://rosdrevo.ru/index.php?option=com_adsmanager&page=show_ad&adid=67&catid=1&Itemid=85 - 400 lazy pine near Tobolsk

Http://rosdrevo.ru/index.php?option=com_adsmanager&page=show_ad&adid=95&catid=1&Itemid=85 - pine from national park"Buzuluksky Bor"

Http://gorodskoyportal.ru/peterburg/blog/4346102/ - The oldest tree in St. Petersburg.

Http://sibved.livejournal.com/47355.html - 5000-year-old forest excavated by storms

http://nashaplaneta.su/news/chto_ot_nas_skryvajut_pochemu_derevja_starshe_150_200_let_vstrechajutsja_tolko_pod_kulturnym_sloem/2016-11-27-35423

Another notch for memory. Is everything honestly and objectively presented in official history?

Most of our forests are young. They are between a quarter and a third of their lives. Apparently, in the 19th century certain events occurred that led to the almost total destruction of our forests. Our forests keep big secrets...

It was a wary attitude towards Alexei Kungurov’s statements about Perm forests and clearings at one of his conferences that prompted me to conduct this research. Well, of course! There was a mysterious hint of hundreds of kilometers of clearings in the forests and their age. I personally was hooked by the fact that I walk through the forest quite often and quite far, but I didn’t notice anything unusual.

And this time the amazing feeling was repeated - the more you understand, the more new questions appear. I had to re-read a lot of sources, from materials on forestry of the 19th century to modern “ Instructions for carrying out forest management in the Russian forest fund" This did not add clarity, rather the opposite. But there was confidence that things are dirty here.

The first surprising fact that was confirmed is the dimension quarterly network. By definition, a quarterly network is “ A system of forest blocks created on forest lands for the purpose of inventorying the forest fund, organizing and maintaining forestry and forest management».

The quarterly network consists of quarterly clearings. This is a straight strip cleared of trees and shrubs (usually up to 4 m wide), laid in the forest to mark the boundaries of forest blocks. During forest management, quarterly clearings are cut and cleared to a width of 0.5 m, and their expansion to 4 m is carried out in subsequent years by forestry workers.

Fig.2

In the picture you can see what these clearings look like in Udmurtia. The picture was taken from the Google Earth program ( see Fig.2). The blocks are rectangular in shape. For measurement accuracy, a segment of 5 blocks wide is marked. It was 5340 m, which means that the width of 1 block is 1067 meters, or exactly 1 way mile. The quality of the picture leaves much to be desired, but I myself walk along these clearings all the time, and what you see from above I know well from the ground. Until that moment, I was firmly convinced that all these forest roads were the work of Soviet foresters. But why the hell did they need to mark out the neighborhood network? in versts?

I checked. The instructions state that blocks should be 1 by 2 km in size. The error at this distance is allowed no more than 20 meters. But 20 is not 340. However, all forest management documents stipulate that if block network projects already exist, then you should simply link to them. This is understandable; the work of laying clearings is a lot of work to redo.

Fig.3

Today there are already machines for cutting down glades (see. Fig.3), but we should forget about them, since almost the entire forest fund of the European part of Russia, plus part of the forest beyond the Urals, approximately to Tyumen, is divided into a verst block network. There are also kilometer-long ones, of course, because in the last century foresters have also been doing something, but mostly it’s the mile-long one. In particular, in Udmurtia there are no kilometer-long clearings. This means that the design and practical construction of a block network in most of the forest areas of the European part of Russia were completed no later than 1918. It was at this time that Russia adopted mandatory use metric system measures, and the mile gave way to a kilometer.

It turns out made with axes and jigsaws, if we, of course, correctly understand historical reality. Considering that the forest area of ​​the European part of Russia is about 200 million hectares, this is titanic work. Calculations show that the total length of the clearings is about 3 million km. For clarity, imagine the first lumberjack, armed with a saw or an ax. In a day he will be able to clear on average no more than 10 meters of clearing. But we must not forget that this work can be carried out mainly in winter. This means that even 20,000 lumberjacks, working annually, would create our excellent verst quarter network for at least 80 years.

But there has never been such a number of workers involved in forest management. Based on articles from the 19th century, it is clear that there were always very few forestry specialists, and the funds allocated for these purposes could not cover such expenses. Even if we imagine that for this purpose peasants were driven from surrounding villages to do free work, it is still unclear who did this in the sparsely populated areas of the Perm, Kirov, and Vologda regions.

After this fact, it is no longer so surprising that the entire neighborhood network is tilted by about 10 degrees and is not directed towards the geographic North Pole, and, apparently, to magnetic ( the markings were carried out using a compass, not GPS navigator ), which should have been located approximately 1000 kilometers towards Kamchatka at that time. And it’s not so embarrassing that magnetic pole, according to official data from scientists, has never been there from the 17th century to the present day. It’s no longer scary that even today the compass needle points in approximately the same direction in which the quarterly network was made before 1918. All this cannot happen anyway! All logic falls apart.

But it is there. And in order to finish off the consciousness clinging to reality, I inform you that all this equipment also needs to be serviced. According to the norms, a complete audit takes place every 20 years. If it passes at all. And during this period of time, the “forest user” must monitor the clearings. Well, if anyone was watching in Soviet times, it’s unlikely that over the past 20 years. But the clearings were not overgrown. There is a windbreak, but there are no trees in the middle of the road.

But in 20 years, a pine seed that accidentally fell to the ground, of which billions are sown annually, grows up to 8 meters in height. Not only are the clearings not overgrown, you won’t even see stumps from periodic clearings. This is all the more striking in comparison with power lines, which special teams regularly clear of overgrown bushes and trees.

Fig.4

This is what typical clearings in our forests look like. Grass, sometimes there are bushes, but no trees. There are no signs of regular maintenance (see. Fig.4 And Fig.5).

Fig.5

The second big mystery is the age of our forest, or the trees in this forest. In general, let's go in order. First, let's figure out how long a tree lives. Here is the corresponding table.

* In brackets are the height and life expectancy in particularly favorable conditions.

In different sources, the figures differ slightly, but not significantly. Pine and spruce should live up to 300...400 years under normal conditions. You begin to understand how absurd everything is only when you compare the diameter of such a tree with what we see in our forests. A 300-year-old spruce should have a trunk with a diameter of about 2 meters. Well, like in a fairy tale. The question arises: Where are all these giants? No matter how much I walk through the forest, I haven’t seen anything thicker than 80 cm. There aren’t many of them. There are individual copies (in Udmurtia - 2 pines) which reach 1.2 m, but their age is also no more than 200 years.

In general, how does the forest live? Why do trees grow or die in it?

It turns out that there is a concept of “natural forest”. This is a forest that lives its own life - it has not been cut down. He has distinguishing feature- low crown density from 10 to 40%. That is, some trees were already old and tall, but some of them fell affected by fungus or died, losing competition with their neighbors for water, soil and light. Large gaps form in the forest canopy. A lot of light begins to get there, which is very important in the forest struggle for existence, and young animals begin to actively grow. Therefore, a natural forest consists of different generations, and crown density is the main indicator of this.

But if the forest was clear-cut, then new trees for a long time grow simultaneously, crown density is high, more than 40%. Several centuries will pass, and if the forest is not touched, then the struggle for a place in the sun will do its job. It will become natural again. Do you want to know how much natural forest there is in our country that is not affected by anything? Please, map of Russian forests (see. Fig.6).

Fig.6

Bright shades indicate forests with a high canopy density, that is, these are not “natural forests.” And these are the majority. All European part indicated by saturated blue. This is as indicated in the table: " Small-leaved and mixed forests. Forests with a predominance of birch, aspen, gray alder, often with an admixture coniferous trees or with separate sections coniferous forests. Almost all of them are derivative forests, formed on the site of primary forests as a result of logging, clearing, and forest fires».

You don’t have to stop at the mountains and tundra zone, where the rarity of crowns may be due to other reasons. But the plains and middle zone are covered clearly a young forest. How young? Go and check it out. It is unlikely that you will find a tree in the forest that is older than 150 years. Even a standard drill for determining the age of a tree is 36 cm long and is designed for a tree age of 130 years. How does forest science explain this? Here's what they came up with:

« Forest fires are a fairly common occurrence in most of the taiga zone. European Russia. Moreover: forest fires in the taiga are so common that some researchers consider the taiga as a lot of burnt areas of different ages- more precisely, many forests formed on these burnt areas. Many researchers believe that forest fires are, if not the only, then at least the main natural mechanism of forest renewal, replacing old generations of trees with young ones…»

All this is called " dynamics of random violations" That's where the dog is buried. The forest was burning, and burning almost everywhere. And this, according to experts, main reason the age of our forests. Not fungus, not bugs, not hurricanes. Our entire taiga is in burnt areas, and after a fire, what remains is the same as after clear cutting. Hence the high crown density throughout almost the entire forest zone. Of course, there are exceptions - truly untouched forests in the Angara region, on Valaam and, probably, somewhere else in the vast expanses of our vast Motherland. There are really fabulously large trees there in their mass. And although these are small islands in the vast sea of ​​taiga, they prove that a forest can be like that.

What is so common about forest fires that over the past 150...200 years they have burned the entire forest area of ​​700 million hectares? Moreover, according to scientists, in a certain checkerboard order, observing the order, and certainly at different times?

First we need to understand the scale of these events in space and time. The fact that the main age of old trees in the bulk of forests is at least 100 years old suggests that the large-scale burns that so rejuvenated our forests occurred over a period of no more than 100 years. Translating into dates, for the 19th century alone. For this 7 million hectares of forest had to be burned annually.

Even as a result of large-scale forest arson in the summer of 2010, which all experts called catastrophic in volume, burned only 2 million hectares. It turns out nothing" so ordinary"This is not the case. The last justification for such a burned-out past of our forests could be the tradition of slash-and-burn agriculture. But how, in this case, can we explain the state of the forest in places where traditionally agriculture was not developed? In particular, in Perm region? Moreover, this method of farming involves labor-intensive cultural use of limited areas of forest, and not at all the uncontrolled burning of large tracts in the hot summer season, and with the wind.

Having gone through all possible options, we can say with confidence that the scientific concept “ dynamics of random violations"nothing in real life is not justified, and is a myth designed to disguise the inadequate state of the current forests of Russia, and therefore the events that led to this.

We will have to admit that our forests are either beyond any norm) and constantly burned throughout the 19th century ( which in itself is inexplicable and not recorded anywhere), or burned at the same time as a result of some incident, which he vehemently denies scientific world, having no arguments other than that in official nothing like this is recorded in history.

To all this we can add that there were clearly fabulously large trees in old natural forests. It has already been said about the preserved areas of the taiga. It is worth giving an example in part deciduous forests. In the Nizhny Novgorod region and Chuvashia there are very favorable climate for deciduous trees. There are a huge number of oak trees growing there. But, again, you won’t find old copies. The same 150 years, no older.

Older single copies are all the same. At the beginning of the article there is a photograph of the largest oak tree in Belarus. It grows in Belovezhskaya Pushcha (see. Fig.1). Its diameter is about 2 meters, and its age is estimated at 800 years, which, of course, is very arbitrary. Who knows, maybe he somehow survived the fires, this happens. The largest oak tree in Russia is considered to be a specimen growing in Lipetsk region. According to conventional estimates, he is 430 years old (see. Fig.7).

Fig.7

A special theme is bog oak. This is the one that is extracted mainly from the bottom of rivers. My relatives from Chuvashia told me that they pulled out huge specimens up to 1.5 m in diameter from the bottom. And there were many of them (see Fig.8). This indicates the composition of the former oak forest, the remains of which lie at the bottom. This means that nothing prevents current oak trees from growing to such sizes. Did the “dynamics of random disturbances” in the form of thunderstorms and lightning work in some special way before? No, everything was the same. So it turns out that the current forest simply has not yet reached maturity.

Fig.8

Let's summarize what we learned from this study. There are a lot of contradictions between the reality that we see with our own eyes and the official interpretation of the relatively recent past:

There is a developed neighborhood network over a vast area, which was designed in miles and was laid no later than 1918. The length of the clearings is such that 20,000 lumberjacks, using manual labor, would take 80 years to create it. The clearings are maintained very irregularly, if at all, but they do not become overgrown.

On the other hand, according to historians and surviving articles on forestry, there was no funding of comparable scale and the required number of forestry specialists at that time. There was no way to recruit such a quantity of free labor. There was no mechanization to facilitate this work.

We need to choose: either our eyes deceive us, or the 19th century was not at all what historians tell us. In particular, there could be mechanization commensurate with the tasks described. What interesting purpose could this steam engine from the film " Siberian barber" (cm. Fig.9). Or is Mikhalkov a completely unimaginable dreamer?

Fig.9

There could also be less labor-intensive efficient technologies laying and maintenance of clearings, lost today ( some distant analogue of herbicides). It is probably stupid to say that Russia has not lost anything since 1917. Finally, it is possible that clearings were not cut, but trees were planted in blocks in areas destroyed by fire. This is not such nonsense compared to what science tells us. Although doubtful, it at least explains a lot.

Our forests are much younger than the natural lifespan of the trees themselves. This is evidenced by the official map of Russian forests and our eyes. The age of the forest is about 150 years, although pine and spruce under normal conditions grow up to 400 years and reach 2 meters in thickness. There are also separate areas of forest with trees of similar age.

According to experts, all our forests are burnt. It is fires, in their opinion, that do not give trees a chance to live to their natural age. Experts do not even allow the thought of the simultaneous destruction of vast expanses of forest, believing that such an event could not go unnoticed. To justify this ashes, official science accepted the theory dynamics of random violations" This theory suggests that forest fires that destroy ( according to some strange schedule) up to 7 million hectares of forest per year, although in 2010 even 2 million hectares, destroyed as a result of deliberate forest fires, were called a disaster.

We need to choose: either our eyes are deceiving us again, or some grandiose events of the 19th century with particular impudence were not reflected in official version our past, how did I not fit in there? nor Great Tartary, neither the Great Northern Path . Atlantis with a fallen moon and even then they didn’t fit. One-time destruction 200...400 million hectares forests are even easier to imagine and hide than the undying, 100-year-old fire proposed for consideration by science.

So what is the age-old sadness of Belovezhskaya Pushcha about? Is it not about those severe wounds of the earth that the young forest covers? After all, gigantic fires by themselves don't happen...

Why are all the trees very young in Russia and in Siberia? average age trees are only 150 years old; in America there are huge sequoias that are 2000 years old or more. Why such a huge difference? And why do we have coal in Russia and not in America?

Stone forest

Pine lives for 400 years and individual specimens in Siberia reach a little more and die; pines rarely survive longer, because now the conditions in Siberia are very harsh. But in Kemerovo coal is mined in mines. Where did this Coal come from, which warms us, if not from compressed ancient huge trees, which for some reason mysteriously disappeared from us?

How was coal formed? Not a single academician will answer this question, let alone the Internet. Coal was formed by just a 5-7 meter layer of old tree species, compressed and turned into coal - compressed wood. Some kind of plate fell from above and compressed it, heating them up at the same time. What force lifted hundreds of tons of rocks into the air and covered these trees from above, if you have to go down quite deep into the mine? What is the cause of the creation of coal? Where have all our redwood trees gone, like in America? They obviously were! Apparently, coal was compressed from these redwood trees. But America has no coal, because there was a more favorable climate and all the Sequoias survived.

Maybe it's because of the Tunguska meteorite? The Tunguska meteorite fell on June 30, 1908 in the area of ​​the Podkamennaya Tunguska River, an event called “ Tunguska phenomenon"at 4 o'clock in the morning. But, if the Tunguska meteorite exploded while passing over Europe, then its explosion would be capable of completely destroying a city like St. Petersburg. Thank God that this did not happen, but something did happen, because there are no forests in St. Petersburg - young trees are everywhere and the oldest trees were clearly planted deliberately Peter and Paul Fortress- there are also 300-year-old oak and linden left there
and Oranienbaum there are ancient trees left, but all the trees around are relatively young. It’s not for nothing that they say that there was some unthinkable cataclysm in Nature in 1812-1814 and Napoleon lost to the Russians because he froze in Russia.

The tree ring method is extremely poor at reflecting the consequences of all largest eruptions volcanoes - the eruption of a tropical volcano in the territory of modern Mexico or Ecuador in 1258, the underwater volcano Kuwae in the vicinity of the Pacific islands of Vanuatu in 1458, the mysterious eruption of 1809 and the explosion of the Tambora volcano on the Indonesian island of Sumbawa in 1815.

What kind of cold snap was there then? In 1812, when Napoleon went to Russia, he was stopped by the Russian Frost, and Hitler was also stopped by the Russian frost. Santa Claus is the bodyguard of the Russians. But I have a question: Where does this frost come from at the right time, in the right place, and where did the permafrost in Siberia come from, when it used to be warm in Russia, Russia is the Motherland of elephants?

Everyone remembers Palms in Astrakhan Streis, Jan Jansen:

17th century engraving from a book by Jan Streis. The atrocities of Stepan Razin's Cossacks in captured Astrakhan.

In St. Petersburg, orange trees grew in Oranienbaum Lomonosov near St. Petersburg - this is the Orange City - On all the ancient engravings of the city there are rows of orange trees, moreover, right in the ground, and not in a greenhouse.

Oranienbaum. Engraving by A.I. Rostovtsev, 1716.

Oranienbaum. Engraving by A.I. Rostovtsev, 1716. Sailboats came straight to the palace, which already stood in 1716. Oraniybaum where in open ground oranges grew earlier. #Peter #Lomonosov

Engraving. Grand Palace Oranienbaum. Mid-18th century.

Engraving. Grand Palace Oranienbaum. Mid-18th century.

Trees react very sensitively to the slightest changes in climatic conditions - increase or decrease in temperature, energy solar radiation and other factors. All these events are reflected in the shape and thickness of annual rings - layers of wood in the trunk, which are formed during the growing season. It is believed that dark rings correspond to unfavorable conditions environment, and light ones are favorable. and now, when trees are cut down, the entire core is completely dark - these were not favorable years for tree growth.

Michael Mann from Pennsylvania State University in State College (USA) and his colleagues tested how accurately tree rings reflect the short-term drop in temperature that occurs after severe tropical volcanic eruptions.

To do this, Mann and his colleagues compared graphs of seasonal temperature fluctuations from 1200 to the present day, which were obtained using a “conventional” climate model and a technique that included analysis of tree rings. The traditional model tracks changes in the intensity of solar radiation and fluctuations in the planet's energy balance, which are reflected in increases or decreases in average temperatures.

The second method used as initial data sections of trunks obtained in 60 high-mountain forest areas on the so-called “treeline” - the maximum height at which ordinary trees can grow. Local climatic conditions only minimally satisfy the needs of woody vegetation, and abnormally high or low average annual temperatures are clearly reflected in the rings.

Because of this, chronological errors can accumulate in sections as one moves from relatively modern rings to more ancient ones."

And you know. What I think is that it’s easy in Russia because of the anomalous low temperatures our forest simply has not grown. And the dark cores of the trees are proof of this - the Ice Age influenced our trees.

The truth is somewhere near.