Reclamation of disturbed lands

Although Earth has lost at least 35% of its pre-agricultural forest cover over the past three centuries, forests are still widely distributed, covering a total of 40 million km2 (~25%) of Earth’s terrestrial surface. Of the remaining forests, as much as 82% is now degraded to some extent as a result of direct human actions such as industrial logging, urbanization, agriculture and infrastructure. Anthropogenic degradation of forest biogeocenoses of the planet causes economic activity, which is expressed in physical changes in forests and leads to a decrease in their ecological functions. This may be the fragmentation of forests, clear-cutting, excessive seizure of resources of individual species (both tree species and hunting objects) and changes in fire and flood regimes. Currently, on the territory of the Russian Federation, where forests used to grow in previous centuries, several million hectares of land were disturbed during the development of mineral deposits, lying of linear objects, carrying out logging, reclamation, exploration, storage of industrial and household waste, and more...