From 15 to 27 August, Yugra State University is holding the VII International Symposium ‘West Siberian Peatlands and the Carbon Cycle: Past and Present’.
The aim of the Symposium is to promote a broad exchange of knowledge in the study of biodiversity, waterlogging processes and preservation of biosphere functions of bogs and wetland forests, integrated ecological monitoring of bog ecosystems, the role of bogs in the global carbon cycle, as well as the assessment of anthropogenic impact on the functioning of peatlands and issues of implementation of modern technologies of low-carbon nature management in the context of climate change.
In an interview with Elena Lapshina, Director of the UNESCO Research Centre-Chair ‘Environmental Dynamics and Global Climate Change’, we learnt about the attractiveness of the West Siberian bogs for scientists and the role of YuSU scientists in studying bogs.
- Tell us about the aims and objectives of the symposium: what's new?
- This is the seventh symposium. The first one was in 2001. That is almost a quarter of a century ago. However, the aims and objectives have not changed much. The only thing is that now the emphasis is placed on the applied sphere related to climate projects. Because carbon is at the focus of all these climate projects. This is probably the only nuance. This is reflected in the programme, because there is a round table ‘Carbon regulation and climate projects in the context of climate change’ for people to share their experience in implementing climate projects or problems related to their implementation, or the regulatory framework that has not yet been developed for these projects.
- Tell us about the experience of the past years, how did the past symposia benefit you?
- Any conferences, symposiums, workshops, meetings of specialists are organized and held not for the sake of PR, but for the sake of communication between specialists in problem solving. They share the results of their research. It turns out that someone in another part of the globe or our country is already doing something similar. In one region the measurements give one result, in another - another. Everyone has problems, they have the opportunity to discuss them directly.
- What is the attraction of the West Siberian bogs for scientists?
- If you look at a map - not only of Russia, but also of the globe - you will notice that Western Siberia is a huge region that is one-third covered with swamps. This is a huge reservoir of so-called ‘wetlands’ or ‘peatlands’, i.e. territories occupied by bogs. In general, bogs occupy a very small area in the world: peat bogs occupy about 3 per cent of the land area. Nevertheless, their contribution to the carbon balance of the planet is very significant. It is almost more than a third of all soil carbon on the globe and more than half of all carbon in the atmosphere of planet Earth. That's a very large pool of carbon. What role it plays in the current situation and how it will behave under climate change is very important. It is incorrect, to say the least, not to take into account the role of wetlands in predicting climate change on the planet as a whole and specifically in the northern hemisphere. There is a lot of interest in our region, because there are not just bogs here, they occupy very large areas. Even small flows per square metre, if we multiply this by all of our hundreds or thousands of square kilometres, this is a very large biospheric impact. This is not only our regional interest, not only our national interest, it is a global interest. Any models of climate change without taking into account the bogs of Western Siberia are not quite correct.
- Please tell us about the role of YuSU scientists in the study of bogs?
- We started holding these symposia when the Mukhrino station was not yet open. That is why we have been studying bogs for 50 years (me in particular). And 25 years of them we have been holding these symposiums. By that time we had already accumulated quite a lot of experience related to the study of biodiversity, bog typology. These are the first 25 years. Since 1999 (when the Yugra State University was not opened yet) we started to deal with the problem of the role of bogs in the carbon balance, estimation of carbon reserves in bogs, dynamics of their accumulation during the holocene. This period of study lasted, probably, even before my presence here. These were expeditionary studies. One of the conclusions was that in addition to the fact that we established certain regularities, revealed how much carbon was accumulated in the bogs of Western Siberia, how quickly it was accumulated, there was an understanding that the study of the carbon balance is possible only on a permanent systematic regime basis. This should not only be expeditionary research, because one-time measurements give little idea of the real balance and fluxes, because we measure gases - carbon dioxide, methane, and this is a very changeable substance, dynamic. And a single measurement gives little information: a day earlier or a day later after a rainstorm, in cold weather, what kind of spring it was, what was the previous year - that is, the mass of factors depends on what the actual flux at a particular moment in time was. Therefore, for adequate and more accurate forecasts we need some kind of average integral estimate. One-time measurements can be used to calculate the average with greater or lesser accuracy, but a relatively accurate estimate can be obtained only by organising such stationary modes of observation. In fact, this was one of the goals of the Mukhrino station. It was established in 2007. In 2009 we officially opened it. It took us 10 years to create the primary infrastructure, but already then we started to measure the fluxes with longer or shorter intervals. During this time the group of scientists has grown, in the beginning we were just three, now we have many researchers, young people are growing up. At this symposium, it's not just staff members reporting results - there will be about 10 student papers. The students work either as lab technicians or research engineers. They have almost doubled the size of the group. And at this symposium, we will report on the latest results obtained in the four years since the last symposium, which was held in 2021.
- How is the symposium useful to scientists?
- I have been organising this symposium, excursions to the Kondinskiye Lakes and traditionally to the Mukhrino station for many years. As it appeared, it seemed to me all the time that it was the same places, there were already people there. Indeed, someone was there, but there were only a few. In four years, the composition of the participants has been very much renewed. Yes, there are, of course, those who visit regularly, they are attracted not so much by excursions as by socialising. Of course, we communicate online all the time, there are a lot of joint publications. Now the number of specialists, including young ones, who have started to deal with bogs, as it is connected with carbon, has increased dramatically. This issue is very dramatically expanding the range of participants. If we look at the programme of this symposium, there is no one there - from those who study atmospheric physics and modelers who develop global models, to those who work on microbiology in bogs. Hydrology, botany, phytocinology, landscape science, peat science, water chemistry, so many different aspects are represented. And this is also the peculiarity of these symposia: people from different specialities can communicate with each other and listen to what is being done in a related field. For example, we study the dynamics of fruiting bodies in fungi. This monitoring by classical methods has been going on for almost 10 years. It depends on a mass of reasons - on temperature, moisture, hydrology, how much the regime changes, on the biochemistry of the plant material that these fungi decompose. You can hear all this because someone is dealing with the fungi themselves, isolating, identifying species, and someone else is dealing with the chemical composition of plant residues or the rate of decomposition of those residues without knowing the fungi. These specialists can be in contact with each other.
- What is the main feature of the symposia?
- The main feature of these symposia, what makes them different from many other conferences, is field excursions. Not every conference implies such a thing, at best - a cultural programme. Our field trips are not just a cultural programme. It is an opportunity for specialists to touch, feel and evaluate everything themselves. This direct communication between specialists at the sites is enriching. Then we read literature. Scientists from Karelia tell about their bogs, scientists from Khabarovsk Krai - about theirs, but when other scientists have been to these bogs, they immediately perceive and put this information on what they have seen, they know how it looks like and what are the peculiarities. This greatly increases the effectiveness of the publication. Therefore, specialists try to participate in symposiums to broaden their horizons, to understand, because in different bioclimatic zones the same processes are slightly different. And our ultimate goal is to create a nationwide monitoring system, a national system for monitoring carbon stocks and carbon-containing greenhouse gas fluxes. The logistics of this symposium are extremely complicated. Nevertheless, we always usually have about 80 people. This time 90 people will come to Beloyarsky.
- Delegations from which countries and subjects of Russia will take part in the symposium?
- There will be a delegation of Chinese scientists - two groups. One group is from the Institute of Atmospheric Physics of the Chinese Academy of Sciences. Because they are in contact with our Obukhov Institute of Atmospheric Physics of the Russian Academy of Sciences. Last year, a working meeting was held in YuSU, Chinese colleagues were at the station, looked at it, assessed how it can be used, they are working in a close direction and are ready to share their results. The second group is palaeoecologists who study peat deposits, the history of bog development, the Holocene over 10 thousand years. Two scientists will come from the V.F. Kuprevich Institute of Experimental Botany of the National Academy of Sciences of Belarus. We will communicate with each other more closely within the country. If you look at the list of Russian regions, it is impressive. Unfortunately, colleagues from Khabarovsk and Kaliningrad will not be able to come in person, they will connect remotely. There will also be simultaneous translation of speakers' speeches at the symposium and a broadcast will be organised.
- Can you tell us more about the field excursions that will be organised for the symposium participants?
- Many of those who are about to arrive in Beloyarsky have been to Khanty-Mansiysk, but want to see other bogs as well. If at Mukhrino it is medium taiga, then from here we move at least 500-600 kilometres to the north. And this is already a different bioclimatic zone, slightly different bogs. We didn't find any typical frozen ones there, we can't show them, because Beloyarsky is located in the lower reaches of the Kazym and the Ob flows nearby. These two rivers create a special microclimate, milder than the interfluves, where zonal types of bogs are represented. These large waterways, of course, have an impact. That is why we are actually talking not so much about typical bogs of the middle taiga, but about typical bogs of terrace complexes of the Kazym River, but within the middle taiga zone. 60 participants of the symposium will go on field trips. Some of the participants will visit ‘Mukhrino’, the peasant farm ‘’Chaynikov's Yurts‘’ (plantations for growing forest and bog berries) and bog plots and production of SPHAGNUM ECO company for extraction and processing of sphagnum moss, as well as the natural park ‘Kondinskie Lakes’.
The first symposium was in 2001. That is almost a quarter of a century since the first symposium and the first idea. The second symposium was later in 2007, then 2011, 2014, 2017, 2021 and now 2024.
Дата:
13.08.2024