Smoke, massive fires and death of rare animal species: how Yakutia burns

How such massive fires occurred in Yakutia

A sharp increase in the area of ​​forest fires in Yakutia this year

started around June 20th, which is approximatelycorresponds to the long-term average period for the onset of large fires in this region. But the current situation, he said, is aggravated by severe drought, which makes fires grow faster and more difficult to extinguish.

Statistics show that humans are to blame for eight out of ten forest fires.

Press service of the Ministry of Emergencies

According to Greenpeace estimates, the total area of ​​forestfires in Yakutia since the beginning of this year amounted to 3.5 million hectares. Since the beginning of the century, fire burned over a large area during the period from January 1 to July 20 only last year (3.9 million hectares), but environmentalists do not rule out that this year a record amount of forest may eventually be destroyed in the republic.

 Why fires are not extinguished in “control zones”

Control zones are the territories in whichNatural fires may not be extinguished if the costs of extinguishing them exceed the damage that the fire could cause. If a fire breaks out in the control zone, regional authorities have the right to decide that it is not economically feasible to extinguish it and not to allocate funds for this.

Of course, this does not happen automatically:a regional commission on emergency situations meets and makes a decision on each specific case. Previously, it was customary not to show such fires in reports at all. Now Rosleskhoz requires that they be taken into account, and the region provides data on them separately.

Control zones are huge areas.They include 49% of the forest fund lands, mainly in the northern territories. In the European part—for example, in the Arkhangelsk region—their areas are small. The main territories are in the Siberian and Far Eastern regions.

In some cases, the entire area of ​​the region ispractically a zone of control: almost all of Chukotka, a very large part of Yakutia, the Koryak District in the Kamchatka Territory. Almost all tundra and forest-tundra fires fall into the control zone, and no one extinguishes them.

In early June, the Ministry of Natural Resources of the Russian Federation convicted the authorities of Yakutiaand the Irkutsk region in understating data about what is happening. Then the head of the department, Alexander Kozlov, sent a complaint to the prosecutor’s office that information from the regions contradicted satellite monitoring data.

To this, the Ministry of Ecology of Yakutia replied that such discrepancies are permissible, since due to thick smoke it is difficult to assess the territory and it is better to do this after the fire has been extinguished.

In Yakutia, the area of ​​forest fires is considered usingthe ISDM-Rosleskhoz system, but, according to local officials, “it is impossible to apply it en masse throughout the control zone due to high financial costs and a limited range of aviation”.

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Air traffic suspended due to fires in Yakutia

Thick smoke from forest fires has paralyzed the work of the Yakutsk airport, and some ferry crossings are also not operating. 

Due to lack of visibility, both arriving and departing flights were delayed. The airport cannot receive or depart flights until weather conditions improve. 

Airport Press Service

The website of the government of Yakutia also states thatDue to zero visibility due to smoke from fires, the movement of ferries on the crossings Yakutsk - Nizhny Bestyakh, Kangalassy - Sottintsy and Mokhsogolloh - Kachikatsy was suspended.

Animals and birds of Yakutia under threat

Animals and birds of rare species are under threat. Fires often occur in the Olekminsky Nature Reserve and the Lena Pillars National Park, a UNESCO World Heritage Site. 

The reason that there is a lot of gas activity there is that the soil contains a lot of iron. Where will the lightning shoot? These are the laws of physics, the conclusion is obvious. 

Federal Forestry Press Service

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Causes of fires in Yakutia

The head of Yakutia, Aisen Nikolaev, called global climate change the main cause of fires in the republic: the region is getting hotter every year.

Dry thunderstorms and heat waves in June affectedan increase in the area of ​​forest fires in Yakutia. June became the hottest since 1888. On June 23, the head of Yakutia signed a decree on the introduction of a regional emergency regime due to forest fires.

This idea is also shared by pyrologist JohannGoldammer, for him the current situation is not a surprise. In 2013, under his leadership, with the participation of 50 fire scientists from around the world, an expert report on the consequences of global climate change was prepared and sent to the UN, which described exactly this scenario. 

According to him, the consequences of global warmingespecially noticeable in northern latitudes. In the recent past, large fires in the arctic and subarctic zones were rare. The flame prevented the spread of a special vegetation cover there, in particular layers of humus, or humus, which did not allow heat to penetrate deep into the soil.

How smoke spreads from fires in Yakutia

The consequences of the fires in Yakutia reached the northern states of the United States. The World Meteorological Organization reported on July 15 that it had recorded deteriorating air quality in Alaska.

Also smoke  reached the Khabarovsk Territory, Sakhalin and Magadan regions. 

There is now a wide rangespread of smoke from forest fires in Yakutia. The circulation of the atmosphere is such that the smoke did not go to Eastern and Western Siberia, the south of Siberia, but shifted to the east and northeast. These are the Khabarovsk Territory, Magadan and Sakhalin regions. 

Evgeniy Ponomarev, senior researcher at the forest monitoring laboratory of the Institute of Forestry named after. V. N. Sukachev Siberian Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences

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