Russian forest sequesters substantially more carbon than previously reported

Abstract

Since the collapse of the Soviet Union and transition to a new forest inventory system, Russia has reported almost no change in growing stock (+ 1.8%) and biomass (+ 0.6%). Yet remote sensing products indicate increased vegetation productivity, tree cover and above-ground biomass. Here, we challenge these statistics with a combination of recent National Forest Inventory and remote sensing data to provide an alternative estimate of the growing stock of Russian forests and to assess the relative changes in post-Soviet Russia. Our estimate for the year 2014 is 111 ± 1.3 × 10⁹ m³, or 39% higher than the value in the State Forest Register. Using the last Soviet Union report as a reference, Russian forests have accumulated 1163 × 10⁶ m³ yr^-1 of growing stock between 1988–2014, which balances the net forest stock losses in tropical countries. Our estimate of the growing stock of managed forests is 94.2 × 10⁹ m³, which corresponds to sequestration of 354 Tg C yr^-1 in live biomass over 1988–2014, or 47% higher than reported in the National Greenhouse Gases Inventory.