Analysis of the tree stands health status in the near border area of Russia and Finland based on the regular grid of sample plots and GIS-technologies

Abstract

During the summer field season of 2019, the state of stands in the border zone of Russia and Finland was assessed on the basis of previously established regular network of permanent sample plots (PSP) of the ICP-Forests program. The research was conducted on the territory of the Vyborg district of the Leningrad region located closely to Finnish border. PSP are arranged as a regular network with a step of 4-8 km. Each PSP is a 4-element cluster, strongly oriented to North-South and West-East, consisting of 4 subplots, on each of which evaluated the health state of 6 specially selected model trees. Also occurrence of natural damaging factors such as insects, deceases, wind withdrawals, snow and frost damage as well as manmade such as forest fires, air pollution, garbage dump was registered. Special attention was paid to assessing the availability and stock of dead wood. All collected data was put into special database and analyzed using MapInfo 10.0 Professional software to reveal spatial regularities in tree stands health status characteristics. The concept of tree stand "temperature" was used in statistical analysis of trees distribution over damage classes to interpret the tree stands health status in more holistic and transparent way.