The influence of land-use activities and regional drought on historical fire regimes of Buryatia, Siberia

Every year, millions of hectares burn across Siberia, driven by a combination of warming temperatures, regional drought and human-caused ignitions. Dendrochronology provides a long-term context to evaluate recent trends in fire activity and interpret the relative influence of humans and climate drivers on fire regimes. We developed a 400 year record of fire-scarred trees from 17 sites in pine-dominated forests located southeast of Lake Baikal. Site-level mean fire return intervals (MFIs) ranged from 4 to 27 years for all fires and 8 to 35 years for widespread fires within sites. Sites with the lowest MFI values were located within 1 km of agricultural fields in grassland valleys, suggesting that agricultural burning influenced MFIs at nearby sites. Fire frequency varied over the record, with significantly high values around 1790, from 1865 to 1880, 1948 to 1955 and 1995 to 2005. The increased fire activity corresponded with migration waves to the region and major socio-economic change connected with the establishment and breakdown of the Soviet Union. At broader scales, superposed epoch analysis showed that synchronous fire years were associated with regional drought and precipitation deficits. Wet conditions for 2&ndash;3 years prior to the event year were also significant, suggesting that increased moisture promoted growth of understory fine fuels to support more extensive fires across the study area. Although fire frequencies increased during the 20th century, fire&ndash;climate relationships weakened, suggesting increased human-caused ignitions may override regional climate drivers. Our dataset presents a continuous record of frequent surface fires over the past 400 years, providing a valuable opportunity to compare dendrochronology-based reconstructions with satellite and documentary records. &nbsp;</p

Distribution of vascular plants north of Lake Baikal: a new, open access dataset

The area north of Lake Baikal has been poorly studied. Moreover, most of the studies conducted in this region were focused on mountain ridges or river valleys. This region includes a part of Baikal-Amur Mainline (BAM), a broad-gauge railway in the centre of Siberia, Russia. The railway is an alternative route of the Trans-Siberian Railway; BAM starts in southern Siberia (Taishet station of Irktusk Oblast), passes through the northern part of Lake Baikal and finishes in the Russian Far East (Sovetskaya Gavan station of Khabarovsky Krai). BAM has four connections with the Trans-Siberian Railway and is the centre of economic development for many regions of Russia. Maya Ivanova and Alexandr Chepurnov summarised the existing floristic information for this region in detailed species distribution maps which they published in the book “Flora of the western part of developing regions of Baikal-Amur Mainline (BAM)” (1983). After publishing this book, very few floristic studies have been performed in the study region. All available botanical information is still accumulated in a number of printed papers or books with limited circulation, which are not widely known to the international scientific community.We have digitised the point distribution maps from the book of Ivanova and Chepurnov and georeferenced all occurrence and sampling localities. The resulting dataset includes 9972 occurrences for 770 vascular plant species and subspecies from the area north of Lake Baikal. Additionally, the dataset includes information on the distribution of 43 rare and endangered species with 366 occurrences. From our point of view, the dataset makes a contribution to the global biodiversity data mobilisation, providing plant species distribution data for such a remote mountainous area

Transport Accessibility and Tourism Development Prospects of Indigenous Communities of Siberia

This paper aims to identify details of interaction and mutual influence of tourism and transport infrastructure development using a combination of sociological and statistical methods. For the analysis, five key sites were selected in several parts of Siberia, differing in natural, socio-economic, and ethnocultural quality, but possessing the presence of compact indigenous communities that reproduce traditional forms of both cultural life and economic activity. While each community has its own unique culture and resources for development, several similar characteristics were revealed. It has been revealed that tourists themselves and workers of the tourism sector, including local residents, are unequivocal supporters of transportation system development. A significant part of the population, recognizing the need and advantages of having a well-functioning transport infrastructure, expresses a negative attitude towards easy accessibility of the territory for outsiders who violate the rules and regime for usage of natural resources and augment economic and cultural competition for the local population. Understanding key processes of interrelations, both explicit and hidden, concomitant to socioeconomic development of remote indigenous communities, with the simultaneous development of tourism and transport, allows the authors to propose a model outline of attitudes of local communities towards tourist and transport perspectives in the territory of their residence

Dendrochronological Study of a 19th-Century Log Cabin (the Ethnographic Museum of Peoples of Transbaikalia, Buryatia)

Метод дендрохронологического анализа широко используется для датирования исторических деревянных построек. По сравнению с европейской частью России дендрохронологические исследования археологических и исторических объектов в Сибири начали развиваться лишь в последние десятилетия. При этом до сих пор обширный регион Забайкалья в данном отношении остается малоизученным. В настоящей работе приводятся результаты датирования этапного амбара – экспоната Этнографического музея народов Забайкалья. Отбор древесных кернов (всего 40 образцов с внешних, внутренних стен и потолочного перекрытия дома) и последующий анализ выявили, что часть деревьев, использованных для постройки амбара, срублены в период с ноября 1828 г. по март 1829 г. Предположительный год строительства 1829 г. Таким образом, удалось уточнить дату постройки амбара, который по учетным записям музея датируется серединой XIX в. На основании полученных данных и анализа исторических хроник сделано предположение, что этапный амбар построен, в том числе, для этапирования декабристов. Дендрохронологический материал, собранный с этапного амбара, позволяет существенно продлевать региональные шкалы для датировки исторической древесины и получить новую информацию о цикличности режима увлажнения в бассейне оз. Байкал. Планируется расширить аналогичные исследования на другие объекты историко-культурного наследия ЗабайкальяThe method of dendrochronological analysis, or tree-ring dating, is widely used for dating historical wooden buildings. In contrast to the European part of Russia, dendrochronological research of archaeological and historical wood in Siberia has begun only in recent decades. For this reason, few studies have been conducted in the vast region of Transbaikalia. This paper presents the results of dating of a log cabin used as an exile transit station preserved as an exhibit in the Ethnographic Museum of Peoples of Transbaikalia. An analysis of selected wood core samples (total 40 samples from the external and internal walls and the ceiling) revealed that some of the trees used for the building of the cabin were felled between November 1828 and March 1829. Thus, we managed to ascertain the date of the construction of the cabin, which according to the records of the museum dates back to the mid‑19th century. The dendrochronological material collected from the log cabin allowed to extend significantly the regional scales for historical timber dating, and to obtain new information about moisture cycles of the Lake Baikal basin. Further studies of other sites of historical and cultural heritage of Transbaikalia are planne