Forest economics in Russia is reviewed from pro-Soviet times to the present, showing how, in 100 years, forestry has gone from being an important source of revenue for the state in 1913 to being a serious loss-maker in 2013. The main reasons for this reversal of profitability during the Soviet...

Implementing sustainable forest management (SFM) policy on the ground is not straightforward, and depends on the social-ecological context. To meet the need for place-based stakeholder collaboration towards regionally adapted knowledge production and learning in support of SFM an integrated...

The Russian Federation is one of many countries that have signed the Montreal Protocol and Pan-European Forest Process. These initiatives are aimed at harmonizing national forest inventory systems with criteria and indicators for sustainable forest management. In Russia, the classification of...

Exploitation of natural forests forms expanding frontiers. Simultaneously, protected area frontiers aim at maintaining functional habitat networks. To assess net effects of these frontiers, we examined 16 case study areas on five continents. We (1) mapped protected area instruments, (2) assessed...

A protective forest, including shelterbelt, windbreak, and shelter forest as its synonyms, is characterized by the protective functions of various forest types distributed or planted on ecologically fragile areas or nearby the objects that need to be protected using the ecological effects of...

European Russia rapidly transitioned after the collapse of the Soviet Union from state socialism to a market economy. How did this political and economic transformation interact with ecological conditions to determine forest loss and gain? We explore this question with a study of European Russia in ...

The changes in terminology and concepts relating to forest management during the 20th century are discussed. These changes have been caused by the development of Russian society, science and technology in the period before 1920, during the Soviet era, and in the post-Soviet period. Terminology and...

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...

In recent decades, the Internet, together with information and communication technologies such as personal computers and cellular phones, has provided an electronic alternative to newspapers and printed materials. We examine how Internet adoption has affected worldwide demand for newsprint and...

On October 20, 1948, the Soviet government announced the world's first state-centered program to reverse human-induced climate change, a grandiose plan to construct 5.7 million hectares of forest in the Russian south. However, the plan collapsed upon Stalin's death in 1953 because of a fundamental...