| Summary: | Together with the Russian Academy of Sciences, IIASA's Forestry (FOR) project has released a CD-ROM titled Land Resources of Russia, Version 1.1, containing socioeconomic and biophysical data sets on important targets of international conventions — climate change, wetlands, desertification, and biodiversity. The CD-ROM, a country-scale integrated information system, supports sustainable use of land resources in line with Chapter 10 of Agenda 21 (UNCED) and makes a contribution to the Rio+10 Summit. The Project's analysis of land resources are crucial for doing full greenhouse gas (or carbon) accounting. Integrated land analyses are also important for the introduction of sustainable forest management. FOR's land analyses concentrate on Russia, which is used as a case study for full carbon and greenhouse accounting. Russia's area of forests, called here the forest zone, covers about 1180 million ha or 69% of the land of the country. The forested area (forests forming closed stands) occupies some 765 million ha constituting 65% of the forest zone. Forests are elements of a land-cover mosaic that direct the features of landscapes, ecosystems, vegetation and land uses. The FOR project attempts to overcome the traditional approach of just considering the direct utilities of forests. Instead, FOR operates with a holistic view of forests in a fully-fledged land concept. Integrated analysis of the land requires extended databases that includes various data for the total land operated in the form of GIS-based tools. The land databases on Russia are the most comprehensive ever assembled, inside or outside of Russia. The databases have been enriched by remotely sensed data, biogeochemical functionality (carbon analysis), and institutional frameworks. The data included on the CD-ROM have been specially selected and filtered to meet the following criteria: (1) completeness: to meet a variety of the analysis tasks; (2) complexity: to describe a diversity of the task aspects; (3) consistency: to provide compatible results; to be ata compatible scale and, to provide a compatible time horizon; and (4) uniformity: to allow them to be standardized and formatted according to modern data handling routines. The following databases and coverages are included on the CD-ROM and are available for download: Socioeconomic Database -- Describes the social environment of each administrative region in Russia with close to 7000 parameters. The data cover the years 1987-1993. Coverages in this section include: (1) Socioeconomic Statistical Database. This database provides the following statistical data sets: Population; Labor and Salary; Industry; Agriculture; Capital Construction; Communication and Transport; State Trade and Catering; Utilities and Services; Health Care and Sport; Education and Culture; Finance; Public Consumption; Industrial Production; Interregional Trade; Labor Resources; Supply of Materials; Environmental Protection; Foreign Trade; and Price Indices. (2) Population Database. Adapted from Center for International Earth Science Information Network (CIESIN), Columbia University; International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI); and World Resources Institute (WRI). 2000. Gridded Population of the World (GPW), Version 2, this coverage contains population densities for 1995 on a 2.5 degree grid. Data were adjusted to match United Nations national population estimates for 1995. (3) Administrative Oblasts, Cities & Towns Database. Oblasts coverage contains 92 polygons, 88 of which contain Oblast names, the other four represent waterbodies. The cities coverage contains 37 cities identified by name. (4) Transportation Database. The statistical data sets and maps cover the transport routes of the railway, road, and river networks spanning the entire country. Railways and roads are classified by type and status, and major rivers are named. Map coverages (line data) were created from the Digital Chart of the World, using the 1993 version at the 1:1,000,000 scale. Natural Conditions Database. This section of the CD-ROM contains the basic land characteristics. This database provides specialists and scientists in research institutes and international agencies with the capability to perform scientific analysis with a Geographic Information System. These data describe land characteristics that might be applied in various ways, such as individual items (e.g., temperature, elevation, vegetation community, etc.), in combination (e.g., forest-temperature associations, soil spectra for land use types, etc.), and as aggregations based on a conceptual framework of a different level of complexity (e.g., ecosystem establishment, human-induced land cover transformation, biochemical cycle analysis, etc.). Coverage includes: (1) Climate Database. Temperature (annual and seasonal) and Precipitation (annual) data were generated from the Climatic Research Units (CRU) global data set of mean monthly surface climate interpolated from station data to 0.5 degree latitude and longitude for precipitation and mean temperature. Evapotranspiration coverage was created from the FAO/IIASA Global Agro-Ecological Zones CD-ROM. Climatic stations data was converted into a spatial coverage from a database containing x and y coordinates. (2) Hydrology Database. All of the hydrology coverages were created by digitizing from paper maps taken from The World Atlas of Snow and Ice Resources (1997) of the Institute of Geography, Russian Academy of Sciences, Moscow, Russia. The scale of these source maps ranges from 1:20 million to 1:40 million. Polygons were then assigned attributes based on the classes used in the legends from the paper maps. Coverages include: Runoff Characterisitcs (total mean, runoff variation, and underground runoff); Snow Characteristics (dates of establishment, dates of destruction, snow storage, temporal variability, snow redistribution, and snow melt runoff); and Glaciers (freezing potential). (3) Permafrost Database. Coverages were created as described for the Hydrology Database above. Coverages include: Permafrost Extent; Permafrost Temperature; and Ice Thickness. (4) Relief Database. Landforms, Elevation, and Slopes coverages were adapted from Stolbovoi, V., G. Fischer, B. Sheremet, V. Sizov, S. Rozhkova (Kravetz). 1997. The IIASA-LUC Project Georeferenced Database of Russia, Vol.1-2: Soil and Terrain Digital Database (SOTER). Interim Report, IR-98- 0113, International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis, Laxenburg, Austria, 43. The Digital Elevation Model was adapted from GTOPO30, the Global Digital Elevation Model (DEM). (5) Lithology Database. This coverage was created based on the soil coverage of Russia. Attributes include: Percent Occurrence; Texture Classes; Dominant Parent Materials; Associated Classes of Parent Materials; Potential Rooting Depth; Lithological Species; Parent Rocks; and Topsoil Texture. (6) Vegetation Database. Several sources of data were exploited for the database compilation. Initial vegetation characteristics (attributive data) came from the legend of the Map of Vegetation of the Former USSR, produced at a scale of 1:4 million. To this was added information on the general and phytomass characteristics of vegetation in Russia. The geometric data was taken from the original map, with mapping units redrawn on stable material and manually digitized. After entering into the GIS, further processing was done such as changes of projection and scale. The digitized polygons were corrected according to information on coastal lines, water bodies and rivers obtained from the Digital Chart of the World at the scale 1:1 million. Coverages include: Vegetation Zones (Tundra, Forests, Steppes, Deserts, Swamps, and Alluvial); General Characteristics (Paleogeographical Variants; Early Succession); Phytomass Characteristics [Total Storage; Above Ground (living); Above Ground (dead); Below Ground (living); Below Ground (dead); Ratio: Above/below Ground; Net Primary Production; Cropland and Pastures; and Forests]. (7) Soils Database. The soil coverage presented in the CD-ROM is a generalized version of the soil map of Russia at the scale 1:2.5 million (Fridland, 1988). The generalization procedure has passed through two types of aggregation: (1) generalization of the thematic content, and (2) a generalization of the mapping units or polygon geometry. Coverages include: General Information [National (Natural Divisions); Naturalness (Human Impact on Soil)]; and Soil Characteristics (Organic Carbon 30cm; Organic Carbon 100cm; Nitrogen Content; CO2 Respiration; Methane Production; Cation Exchange Capacity; Bulk Density; and Topsoil Acidity). Also included are data sets which correlate the Russian soil classes with with WRB, FAO, and U.S. soil classes, as well as Pedotransfering function data sets (e.g., Drainage and Plant Available Water). In addition, there is a Soil Profiles Database and a Soil Adjusted Characteristics Database. These databases both contain a field that links to the soil code in the soil coverage and contain latitude and longitude coordinates allowing them to be converted into a spatial coverage. (8) Biodiversity Database. A database containing latitude and longitude coordinates was used to create a point coverage, to which the biodiversity database was then linked. Coverages include: Protected areas; Vascular plants; Amphibians; Reptiles; Bird Species, Nesting birds; and Mammals. (9) Wetlands Database. The wetland ecosystem coverage was created by combining the soil and land classes coverages from the Land Resources of Russia CD-ROM. Soils were selected and classified into wetland groups ranging from bogs to marshlands. These were then further subdivided based on forest and grass/shrub land classifications. (10) Land Cover Database. A land cover map was generated through a combination of multiple spatial data sets in an iterative process that assigned geographic areas to one of six land classes to match, as closely as possible, the State Land and State Forest Accounts area distribution. It has a scale of 1:4 million. There is also a map of mean annual albedo (%) that was generated from the albedo item found in the vegetation database. Land Endowment Database. This section of the CD-ROM provides various data sets describing the use of land resources in Russia, of which agriculture and forestry are most widely practiced. Coverages include: General Characteristics (Land Use Categories); Agriculture [General Ccharacteristics (State Land Account, Agricultural Regions, Agricultural Intensity); Land Management (Dominat Crops, Crop Rotations, Reclamation Measures, Application of Fertilizers); Pastures and Rangelands; and Livestock (Cattle-breeding; Feeding Types)]; Forest Use [General Characteristics (Dominant Species, Forest Industry); and Anthropogenic Impacts (Fire Frequency, Percentage Burnt)]; Land Productivity [Land Quality (Cereals, Sunflowers, Beets, Grasses)]; Desertification (Causes, Extent); and Land Degradation [Degradation Types (Water Erosion, Terrain Deformation, Compaction, Secondary Salinization, Fires); Protection Measures (Land/Plant Management); and Pollution (Soil and Air)].
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