Economic accessibility of forest resources in Northwest Russia

The project on the Economic accessibility of forest resources in Northwest Russia started in late 2001 and was introduced in this Bulletin in 2003. Since then the focus of the project has been on forest resources as well as economic accessibility. The objectives of assessing the geographical distribution of different wood harvesting levels taking into consideration road accessibility and transportation costs at the enterprise level and coordinating and building a synthesis on the availability of wood resources and their economic accessibility are still relevant.

Satellite based measurements of forest resources for the whole of Europe are currently available as a result of a joint project by the European Forest Institute (EFI), the Joint Research Centre of the European Commission, the European Space Agency and VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland. The resulting maps indicate the amount forest coverage as a percent of land area over most of Europe and in European part of Russia (Päivinen et al, 2001; Schuck et al, 2002).

The research team at EFI has been measuring economic accessibility in Novgorod region in terms of using costs occurring between harvesting and delivery to a lower landing. Along with using pure kvartal level inventory data the team has compared that data with the satellite based data. The reason for this is the fact that inventory data that would be detailed enough for this kind of estimations is hard or in some cases impossible to acquire. With the use of satellite based data which has been combined with the actual map data (including the roads, railroads, waterways, cities etc.) we can have a more precise estimate of the forest resources in the entire region. Using inventory data gives an estimate of only the kvartals that are assigned to forestry, which rules out the areas assigned for agricultural use. As in the figures below (Figure 1 and 2), the total amount of forested area is larger in the satellite based assessment. To assess the geographical whereabouts of the forests in the area, as well as their coverage it may be more feasible to use satellite based data than to start acquiring pure inventory data or at the least check the satellite data for broad areas first before enquiring about inventory data on smaller areas of special interest.

So far the economic accessibility calculations have been done using the actual inventory data with the basic map data of roads, railroads etc.

Preliminary results for a sample of kvartals covering 3 lesnichestvos in Komi are available and "super pixels" (25 square km in size, again, based on the European forest map) covering the entire region of Komi. Volume estimates for the area should be available by the end of the project. By the end of the project (12/2004) it is also envisaged to have the model finished to calculating the economic accessibility with the satellite based data with updated cost information. At the moment, the cost information used is out of date and from only one leskhoz. The final results will be presented in an EFI Discussion Paper in early 2005 (http://www.efi.fi/publications/) and possibly in a seminar in early 2005.

References:

Päivinen, R., Lehikoinen, M., Schuck, A., Häme, T., Väätäinen, S., Kennedy, P., & Folving, S., 2001. Combining Earth Observation Data and Forest Statistics. EFI Research Report 14. European Forest Institute, Joint Research Centre - European Commission. EUR 19911 EN. 101p.

Schuck, A., Van Brusselen, J., Päivinen, R., Häme, T., Kennedy, P. and Folving, S. 2002. Compilation of a calibrated European forest map derived from NOAA-AVHRR data. European Forest Institute. EFI Internal Report 13, 44p. (plus Annexes).


More information:
Bruce Michie, bruce.michie@efi.fi
Kaija Saramäki, kaija.saramaki@efi.fi
European Forest Institute, Finland

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