Section 12. Kyzyl, The Sayan Mountains, Abakan and back to Moscow.

Days 29 and 30: (September 9 and 10) Travel to Kyzyl. Effect of fire on forest steppe ecotone. Overnight in hotel. Farewell party. Travel to Abakan. Cross the Sayan Mountains. View of alpine tundra and high altitude forest. Fly from Abakan to Moscow. Overnight in Moscow Sate University.

En Route from Abakan to Moscow Tuesday, 10 September – 10:30 p.m.

We are sitting in our surprisingly comfortable seats in a Vladivostok Air TU-154, hurtling through the night over Siberia. We are on the 3800 km flight from Abakan to Moscow, the first leg of our journey home. In a way, we have been on our way home for two days already. Yesterday morning we were up early, after another frigid night, but again, the sun warmed up our campsite during breakfast, and dried our tent in time for us to pack it up for our journey home. At half past nine, after a spree of group photographs, we said our farewell to Tore-Hol Lake and the Mongolian mountains, and started our two-day trek northwards to Abakan. The road from our desert camp to Kyzyl was the same over which we had come, so that we saw little that was new, but a flock of demoiselle cranes wheeling upwards on a thermal was a great sight. Also, the recently snowed-on mountains looked very different from what we had seen only a few days ago.

We stopped for a picnic lunch at a site we had seen on our way down on Friday, and which we wanted to explore a bit more. It was a site in the southern Sayan Mountains, which was a forest-steppe ecotone. What made it so interesting, was that it was a nearly pure stand of common pine (P. sylvestris), which was partly burned earlier this year. Serge and I, accompanied by a cluster of students, discussed the roles of fire, grazing and climate on the stability of the forest-steppe ‘tree line’. At another brief stop, we had a chance to see a very similar site, but this one involved the Siberian larch (Larix sibirica). At both sites, it appeared to me that fire was the most important immediate factor which determines the kind of landscape one finds on these rolling hills: steppe, parkland or forest. If steppes burn frequently, and with relatively hot fires, they will lose all tree seedlings that may have invaded them. Furthermore, the fires will slowly burn into the adjacent forest or parkland, and eventually kill all trees. If fires are infrequent and/or light, trees will only rarely suffer, and some seedlings will survive to become mature tees. Especially common pine and larch are fire adapted, having very thick, fire resistant bark. Of course, the problem is more complicated, in that fire frequency and intensity is determined by several factors, the three most important of which are climate, grazing practices and fire management policies. The last one of this trio is obvious, but the most fickle, and ecologically the least interesting. The other two are much more interesting, forming an interdependent, interacting influence, with major effects on the fire ecology of a region. Relatively warm, dry periods will increase the chance of fire, in the sense that what burnable material there is, is more likely to be dry, and thunderstorms are more frequent. However, such conditions will also reduce growth, in the steppe vegetation, and will lead to a more intense grazing effect, assuming a similar herd size and structure. This will reduce the standing biomass in the dry season and lead to less intense fires. In wet, cool years, fires will be much less likely, and the opportunity for tree growth and tree seed germination is enhanced. A further complication arises when we realize that effects of climate and grazing are accumulative over several years, especially in the steppe-forest ecotone. This is mainly due to the accumulation of dead, surface biomass (grasses, branches, etc), especially during wet years, which can create the fuel for severe tree-killing fires in subsequent dry years.

What we saw yesterday in both sites illustrated the above argument well. In places where a dry, steep slope had carried a sparse and low steppe vegetation, the fire had been light, even sparing the odd pine of larch seedling, while scattered, mature trees were totally unaffected. However, in areas with more grass and shrubbery, or dense stands of young trees with dead lower branches, mortality among young trees was very high. Even some old trees (100 years or over), which undoubtedly had survived many previous fires, were killed. What we saw in this fire, was the transition of forest to parkland, but no effective encroachment of the steppe. However, the parkland had virtually no tree regeneration, which implies that under current conditions, eventually the steppe will spread. Kostya told us, that the region has seen an enormous increase in fire frequency over the past decade. This is partly due to a series of exceptionally warm, dry years, but also due to the currently poor economic conditions in Siberia. The high unemployment rate has led to a lot of men creating new means of making a few extra rubles. One such venture is selling deer antlers to China, and antlers are more easily found in a forest in which the undergrowth has been burnt. Hence, many recent forest fires have been intentionally set by antler collectors. Nobody here knew whether in the pre-Soviet era traditional herders used to burn the steppe intentionally to stimulate new growth, a common practice worldwide. As you can surmise from the above musings, it is easy to formulate a general theory, it is harder to explain specific situations, and obviously impossible to predict exactly what will happen when. The general theory presented above is still a considerable oversimplification; I could write many more pages on this topic, but this is a set of travel notes, not a book chapter.

This morning came early, and after a meager breakfast of rice porridge, we were off on our eight-hour bus ride to Abakan. In our overloaded rattletrap bus, this was not something I had looked forward to, but despite the discomfort, it turned out to be a fascinating trip. We traveled northwards over two parallel ranges of the Sayan Mountains (the same ones we had sailed through southwards on the Amyl!). We drove through dense montane forests of Siberian pine, got to within what would have been a short walk of alpine tundra, and had some close up views of glittering snow-capped mountain peaks and thrillingly deep gorges. The forest was at its autumn best, with dark green conifers and birches and aspen in all hues of yellow and orange. We had no time to stop for more than lunch and a few photo-ops, so we went straight to the Abakan airport. There, after much delay we joined the Vladivostok to Moscow flight. I should try and get a couple of hours sleep.

Moscow Airport, Departure Lounge #8 Thursday, 12 September – 6:30 a.m.

Dawn is hazily spreading over Moscow. The airport’s sodium lights are still bright, but the sky is pale pink and hazy blue overhead, and landmarks are becoming visible. We are sitting in the departure lounge with about 80 other travelers, waiting for our flight to Paris. Jeri completed her last shopping expedition among the various duty-free displays of the abundance of Russia’s new consumer society. We have survived all the Russian bureaucratic hurdles, and are trying to get used to the idea that this venture is really over and done with.