Protecting Lake Baikal.I went to Russia recently to take part in a Sustainable Forestry Sustainable forestry is a forest management practice. The basic tenet of sustainable forestry is that the amount of goods and services yielded from a forest should be at a level the forest is capable of producing without degradation of the soil, watershed features or seed source and Watershed Workshop for local foresters and officials concerned with protection of Lake Baikal Noun 1. Lake Baikal - the largest freshwater lake in Asia or Europe and the deepest lake in the world Baikal, Baykal, Lake Baykal Siberia - a vast Asian region of Russia; famous for long cold winters . The Lake Baikal watershed comprises some 148 million acres in Russia's central Siberia and northern Mongolia. Much of the area is forested and is crucial to the quality of the lake, a World Heritage Site. The workshop, held in Ulan-Ude, Buryatia, focused on sustainable forest practices, erosion control Erosion control is the practice of preventing or controlling wind or water erosion in agriculture, land development and construction. This usually involves the creation of some sort of physical barrier, such as vegetation or rock, to absorb some of the energy of the wind or water , reforestation Reforestation The reestablishment of forest cover either naturally or artificially. Given enough time, natural regeneration will usually occur in areas where temperatures and rainfall are adequate and when grazing and wildfires are not too frequent. , fire management, and protected area
Protected areas designations. It built upon a Sustainable Development Plan prepared by Russians and Mongolians with help from Americans, including myself, in the 1990s. This resulted in land-use zoning and standards and guidelines that led to the Heritage designation. [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] While there, I handed out copies of American Forests magazine and visited restoration projects; harvest areas; reforestation programs, including tree nurseries and seed tree orchards; and a major forest industry company. Considerable progress has been made in sustainable forest practices and in manufacturing that has moved from log exports to value-added products marketed worldwide.--Zane Smith, AMERICAN FORESTS' Pacific field rep |
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