Resource and Ecological Zoning of Forests of the Nizhny Novgorod Region

Abstract

A critical assessment of the methodological decisions taken by the scientific community in the development of thematic maps-schemes of forest zoning is given. It is indicated that in most cases the authors operate with landscape, climatic and geobotanical characteristics of territories, do not rely on the concepts of taxa as elementary territorial units united in homogeneous groups. Most of the zoning schemes recommended for practical use are based on the intuitive and subjective judgments of the authors and, often, do not have a criterion-proven statistical reliability. Most of the zoning schemes recommended for practical use are based on the intuitive and subjective judgments of the authors and, often, do not have a criterion-proven statistical reliability. The article, using the example of the Nizhny Novgorod region, presents a methodology for developing models of multidimensional zoning of forests growing in 40 forest areas (taxa), endowed with 35 indicators characterizing the geographical coordinates of forest centers, soil productivity in 6 classes, climate in 7 indicators, the structure of forest lands in 17 categories, productivity and closeness of plantings under 3 types of forests. In the multidimensional classification (grouping) of forest areas, the methods of factor, cluster and discriminant analysis were used. As a result of analytical calculations, 7 typical forest areas were identified on the territory of the subject of the Russian Federation. The reliability of the classification of forest areas and the resulting zoning map-scheme is confirmed by the statistical criteria of the total intercluster and intracluster distance of Mahalanobis, the Wilkes lambda and Pearson’s Chi-square criteria.