AIR POLLUTION AND CLIMATE CHANGE EFFECTS ON THE NORTH FORESTS 
Yuri A. Izrael 
Serguei M. Semenov 
Institute of Global Climate and Ecology 
Department of Ecology 
Glebovskaya Street, 20B 
Moscow 107258, Russia 
ISPRS Commission VII / Working Group 5 
ABSTRACT 
Air pollution (SO2, 03 etc) and climate change are known to produce a number of significant 
consequences for forest ecosystems. Therefore, they present an important subject for monitoring and 
assessment. The air pollution effects on plants have been traditionally studied for so called "impact 
zones" (i.e. areas very close to the emission sources). The forest ecosystems responses to a large-scale air 
pollution and climate change (regional, continental and global) have been poorly investigated. However, 
these effects do mean much when one tries to assess the status of north ecosystems on large-scale basis, 
e.g. circumpolarly. Prior to choose an approach to solve the problem one should: a) select a universal 
bioindex which could be monitored widely, simply enough and at lower cost; b) substantiate/estimate a 
sensitivity of anindex proposed to priority large-scale factors of interest and create an optimal procedure 
for data averaging/integration. These issues will be considered in the report on the basis of the annual 
radial tree growth. The results on the coniferous forests in Europe will be presented. 
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