Spatiotemporal changes in the boreal forest in Siberia over the period 1985–2015 against the background of climate change

Abstract

Climate change has been proven to be an indisputable fact and to be occurring at a faster rate (compared to the other regions at the same latitude of the world) in boreal forest areas. Climate change has been observed to have a strong influence on forests; however, until now, the amount of quantitative information on the climate drivers that are producing changes in boreal forest has been limited. The objectives of this work were to quantify the spatiotemporal characteristics of boreal forest and forest types and to find the significant climate drivers that are producing changes in boreal forest. The boreal forest in Krasnoyarsk Krai, Siberia, Russia, which lies within the latitude range 51–69∘ N, was selected as the study area. The distribution of the boreal forest and forest types in the years 1985, 1995, 2005 and 2015 were derived from a series of Landsat data. The spatiotemporal changes in the boreal forest and forest types that occurred over each 10-year period within each 2∘ latitudinal zone between 51 and 69∘ N from 1985 to 2015 were then comprehensively analyzed. The results show that the total area of forest increased over the study period and that the increase was fastest in the high-latitude zone between 63 and 69∘ N. The increases in the areas of broad-leaved and coniferous forests were found to have different characteristics. In the medium-latitude zone between 57 and 63∘ N in particular, the area of broad-leaved forest grew faster than that of coniferous forest. Finally, the influence of the climate factors of temperature and precipitation on changes in the forests was analyzed. The results indicate that temperature rather than precipitation is the main climate factor that is driving change.