Russia has a lot of soil. Russian scientists have been investigating it for centuries and pointeered soil science through researchers such as Dokuchaev, Dokuchaeva, Glazoskaya, Glinka and others. Large soil data projects managed by land institutes e.g. GIZPROZEMs have since been updated using satellite data. Current researchers conducted an agroecological assessment. They investigated land suitable…
Category: organisms
Polar bear poo and human waste
Affected by ice free seas, polar bears are increasingly visiting human villages and adding human waste to their diet. So what are Russian Arctic bears eating? Researchers decided to analyse bear poo to measure natural vs human waste sources of food. Arctic sea ice melt has left polar bears unable to feed on their natural…
What happens to the forest floor after Siberian wildfires?
The main tree species in the Siberian taiga are larch, Scots pine, fir, spruce, Siberian pine and birch. Lightning is more a frequent cause of wildfires in northern Siberia with anthropogenic activity causing wildfires further south, however central and eastern Siberia have been more affected overall by wildfires. They decrease soil quality (organic matter, structure,…
Highway to decomposed organic matter – heavy metals in Central Siberian forests
Mining and potential toxic elements (PTE) causing soil contamination is an internationally researched issue due to the transfer and resilience of the metallic elements in the soil affecting ecosystem health. Metals move from mining dump sites either as airborne elements or through plant root structures into the soil. The researchers studied the Vilyui plain on…
Exploring the ‘carbon polygon’ of Ladoga
Sustainable soil management (SSM) initiatives review organic matter in soil and carbon sequestration to understand how best to mitigate carbon and methane emissions, improving mitigation of climate change. In Russia, the government established a ‘Carbon Polygons’ project assessing and monitoring carbon in different ecosystems and biomes, especially boreal forest regions. The researchers wanted to assess…
A regulatory shhh across Arctic coastal ecosystems?
Alongside the Arctic Ocean, the Barents, White, Kara, Laptev, East Siberian and Chukchi seas are marine ecosystems including seabeds, ocean floor and subsoils. Increases in drilling of the continental shelf increases environmental impact. Yakovleva noted the most common issues are emissions, oil / oil product spills, pollution, waste (including metals, radioactive, plastic etc ), and…
What is lurking in Svalbard’s waters?
Researchers looked at marine biodiversity in Arctic waters near Svalbard, in particular the marine ecosystems in the Barents Sea and the Fram Strait region. In the lower benthic layers of the waters, there are greater biodiversity of e.g. zooplankton and fish species. There is a mix of warmer and saltier Atlantic water and colder Arctic…
Biting back at humans with climate change
A human disease called dirofilariasis caused by parasitic mosquitoes has been affected by the warmer climate in Russia, expanding north and east, currently 58° N (Kondrashin et al., 2022) in both European and Asian Russia. Researchers developed a map using data from the Russian Meteorological office between 1937 and 2016. The data shows long term average…
Growing in and out of their shells in Kamchatka
The recent Benthic survey shows recovery for echinoderms and shelled molluscs in Vilyuchinskaya Bay, April 2022, following the 2020 toxic single-celled algae destroying the marine environment in Avacha Bay. Kamchatka researchers in the Far Eastern Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences, KSTU and divers from Kamchatka RGS completed “Monitoring of qualitative and quantitative indicators…
Arctic Floating University expeditions in 2022
Successful Russian researchers will be heading off soon. The first expedition will be around Novaya Zemlya between June 24 — July 11, 2022 and the second expedition around Franz Josef Land between July — August 2022: https://narfu.ru/en/research/expeditions/fu/expedition-2022/ The expedition’s scientific program has seven main areas: human adaptation to the Arctic, studies of historical and cultural…
Russian Climate Research 