Assessment of Sustainable Forestry within the FSC Voluntary Forest Certification Scheme

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UDС

630* 611

DOI:

10.17238/issn0536-1036.2017.6.23

Abstract

The paper considers the methodology for calculating the sustainability of forest management illustrated by the example of a timber industry enterprise in the Pervomayskiy district of the Tomsk region. The percentage of forest cover land is 94.8 %; the total area of forests leased for timber harvesting is 49 628 ha. The calculation is carried out as part of the preparation of a timber industry enterprise for preliminary and main forest management audit and internal supply chain under the Forest Stewardship Council national forest management standard. The goal of research is the development and approval of methodology for calculating the sustainability of forest management, which meets the requirements of the new forest management standard. The assessment of sustainability consists in a comparative analysis of the characteristic value of the annual wood harvesting in old growth forests, established by the requirements of the forest development project, with average values of increment and the size of annual allowable cut of the uniform use. The distribution by age groups of coniferous and soft-wooded broadleaf economic sections demonstrates the predominance of old growth forests in spruce high-bonitat and fir working circles. The pine high-bonitat economic section is extremely depleted due to logging of the previous period. Large areas of middle-aged birch and aspen forests prove the nature of the old-cultivated site. The accepted annual allowable cut in the forest plot provides the necessary sustainability level during the felling cycle in the fir, birch and aspen economic sections. We recommend the scheme for these working circles at the planned level during the forest development project, with a subsequent revision towards increasing the rate of use of soft-wooded broadleaf forests. In the forest exploitation design, we have found a tendency to overrate the total forest use and the most valuable working circles.

Authors

N.M. Debkov1, Candidate of Agricultural Sciences, Research Officer
A.S. Il’intsev2, 3, Master, Research Officer

Affiliation

¹Institute of Monitoring of Climatic and Ecological Systems of the Siberian Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences, pr. Akademicheskiy, 10/3, Tomsk, 634055, Russian Federation; e-mail: nikitadebkov@yandex.ru
²Northern Research Institute of Forestry, ul. Nikitova, 13, Arkhangelsk, 163062, Russian Federation; e-mail: Ilintsev666@yandex.ru
³Northern (Arctic) Federal University named after M.V. Lomonosov, Naberezhnaya Severnoy Dviny, 17, Arkhangelsk, 163002, Russian Federation; e-mail: Ilintsev666@yandex.ru

Keywords

annual allowable cut, sustainability, forest management unit, working circle, wood increment, forest certification, Forest Stewardship Council system

For citation

For citation: Debkov N.M., Il’intsev A.S. Assessment of Sustainable Forestry within the FSC Voluntary Forest Certification Scheme. Lesnoy zhurnal [Forestry journal], 2017, no. 6, pp. 23–35. DOI: 10.17238/issn0536-1036.2017.6.23

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