摘要：Analysis of vegetation cover and tendencies in forest cover changes at a typical site in the
south of West Siberia was performed using remote sensing observations from Landsat. The
Northern Eurasia Land Cover legend was used for the assessment of unsupervised
classification results. The land cover maps constructed have shown that about
half of the study area is occupied by wetlands with several distinctively different
vegetation types. The area studied is typical for the South Taiga zone (ecoregion) of
Western Siberia from the Ob' river to the Irtysh river, where loamy and clayey soil
forming rocks are widespread. Similar vegetation structures dominate over 600 000 km2, or about 20%, of the West Siberia area. Analyses of the forest cover changes show that
the forest cover loss is not very significant. The area of forest disturbed in 1990–9 is equal
to 16 008 ha. The area of forest disturbances during the 2000–7 period was about twice as
high (30 907 ha). The main reasons for the forest reduction are intensive forest harvesting
and strong windthrow. The high sustainability of the region studied against anthropogenic
impacts is explained by the high overall wetness of the territory, the small population
density, and the prevalence of deciduous forests at different succession stages with rich
vegetation cover.
