%0 Review article
%T Natural disturbance dynamics in the boreal forests of European Russia: a review
%A Gromtsev, Andrei
%D 2002
%J Silva Fennica
%V 36
%N 1
%R doi:10.14214/sf.549
%U https://silvafennica.fi/article/549
%X In the European part of the Russian boreal zone the dynamics of pristine  forests (taiga) has been studied by several generations of researchers.  Many studies have examined the patterns and role of fire, windthrow,  insect outbreaks and other natural disturbances. An attempt is made to  provide a brief review of these studies. The reviewed studies show that  lightning strikes were the only natural source of fires in taiga. The  frequency of fires varied in various types of pristine landscape from  1–2 per century to 1–2 per millennium. Fires maintained a dynamic  equilibrium between compositionally different forest communities or  their certain ratio and areal occurrence. Fires favored the regeneration  and recovery of pine forests and prevented the replacement of  shade-intolerant species (e.g. pine) by shade-tolerant ones (e.g.  spruce). Taiga forests generally displayed a mosaic pattern that varied  from pioneer plant communities, growing in open burns, to climax  communities that were extremely seldom affected by fire. The reviewed  studies suggest that fires were a powerful ecological factor in pristine  taiga, being largely responsible for the structure and spontaneous  dynamics of forest communities. Windfalls were also common in pristine  taiga landscapes and they regulated spontaneous dynamics in a gap-mosaic  regime, which is most characteristic of spruce forests.