ИСТИНА

The Forest Resource Assessment of 2015 (FAO UN) shows that over the last 25 years annual increase of forest growing stock tended to exceed annual forest area losses. Forests cover 67% of the Russian Federation territory and are important for stabilizing climate in the country, as well as on the planet. 88 % of the Russian forests grow in the boreal and in the temperate (coniferous-deciduous forests) zones. Since 1956, the total forest area, timber volume and stand increment have increased. The net annual increment of forest stands (NAI) has increased from 807.9 million m3/yr in 1956 to 1.01 billion m3/yr in 2015. The increase of the net annual increment by area was 1.2 m3/ha/yr and 1.32 m3/ha/yr respectively. New results of the Russian forests carbon sink assessment based on State Forest Register data following the IPCC methodology are presented in this paper. In 2015, Net Ecosystem Production (NEP) of the Russian forests was 630±110 million tons/year including about 140 million tones/year accumulated in dead biomass. The controversy over how to improve the carbon balance assessment for the national forests is discussed in this paper. Some areas were excluded from managed forests, for instance ~200 million ha of “inaccessible” forests in remote regions and 74.9 million ha of shrubs, because of methodological ambiguity. In addition, the evaluation of carbon balance for the National Assessment Report doubled the carbon losses caused by timber harvest and wood removal and overestimation of forest fire losses. According to the preliminary calculations, these two factors lead to underestimation of the carbon sink in Russian forests equal to~340±75 million tons per year total.