Siberia is an enormous area in North Asia spreading from the Urals in the west to mountainous ridges of the Okhotsk Sea coast in the east, from the Arctic Ocean in the north to borders with Kazakhstan, Mongolia and China in the south.
Three great rivers, the Ob, the Yenisei and the Lena, flow across the territory of Siberia. The world oldest and deepest Lake Baikal is found here. The world greatest lowland, the West-Siberian Plain, covers 2.7 million km of Siberia’s territory. About a half of the planet’s boreal forests grow here. Here is the world largest natural forest-swamp complex. Mountainous massifs and highlands occupy large areas in Eastern Siberia. Mountain systems border Siberia from the west, the east and the south, enclosing it from cyclones of the Atlantic and the Pacific Oceans, as well as from hot Central Asia.
In Siberia latitudinal zoning of natural landscapes is well expressed. From the north to the south, tundra passes into boreal forests, forest-steppe. Mountains, characterised by vertical zoning of climate and biota, frame these landscapes.
Common points for the whole Siberia are an extreme continental climate and vast permafrost areas.
At present, the SB RAS is a developed system of complex and scientific institutes, permanents establishments and scientific stations, dispersed all over Siberia. The scientific centers of the SB RAS are situated in Novosibirsk, Tomsk, Krasnoyarsk, Irkutsk, Ulan Ude, Jakutsk, Kemerovo, Tyumen, Omsk. Separate institutes are situated in Barnaul, Kizil, Chita.
The SB RAS includes 10 biological institutions situated in different Siberian regions. During many decades they have been carrying out investigations of biological resources of Siberia: soils, forests, plants, animals, river, lake and mash systems. They work in tight cooperation with geological institutes studying the geological structure of different Siberian territories, as well as physical institutes, that run studies in the state of atmosphere.
Main characteristic feature of these investigations is that they are performed on the basis of the network of permanent biosphere and geosphere scientific establishments including seismic, permafrost, gelio- and cosmophysical ones, often equipped with unique installations on a level with the highest national and world standards. They are dispersed about the area that makes up over 50% of the Russian territory and represent an important part of the international system of stations performing long-term observations and contributing data to world databases.
Besides this, for investigation of the biological resources of Siberia and monitoring its ecological conditions, institutes of SB RAS carry out research expeditions on a wide scale. In the last 40 years many thousands of scientific expeditions were launched which provided with unique scientific material and observations.
Extraction and processing of minerals, industrial pollution, devastating forest felling, extensive land management and reservoirs of large hydroelectric power stations make an essential effect on Siberian nature. However, thanks to Siberia’s dimensions, it still contains large, relatively slightly impacted territories, where pollution is of focal character, which favours studies of natural plant and animal communities, as well as environmental problems.
The area of Siberia is greater than one-half of the area of the Russian Federation, almost equal to the area of Europe, almost a quarter of the entire Asia or 1/15 of the whole land of the Earth.
Siberia contains 20 entities of the Russian Federation. Its population residing mainly along the Trans-Siberian Railway and in the south, amounts to 15% of the whole Russia population.
Development of Siberia, since its joining Russia in late XVI century, has always been associated with exploitation of its natural resources: first fur, then lands and noble metals, now mostly raw materials and power resources. To develop these resources, supply cities and industrial communities with fuel-power, mining and processing industry was developed and thousands of kilometres of oil and gas pipelines, railways, highways and electric power transmission lines were laid.
Technical progress in Siberia has entailed ore deposits, oil and gas resources development, as well as forest, chemical industries and metallurgy improvement, creation of supply power systems and activation of agriculture and transport communication systems. All these pose ever growing anthropogenic load on Siberia’s nature and threaten the existing biodiversity, destroy historically formed landscape-geographic zones, cause great losses to aquatic ecosystems and pollute the atmosphere.
Taking this into consideration, the SB RAS attaches more and more importance to realization of global ecologic projects directed towards the monitoring of environment and studying the consequences of anthropogenic load on nature (biodiversity, soils, aqueous and marsh systems and atmosphere etc.)
Results of evaluation of Siberia’s biological resources and the influence of anthropogenic factors on its nature are summarised in a great number of articles, analytic surveys, monographs, atlases, maps and databases.
The SB RAS is aimed at widening the framework of international cooperation in the field of investigation of Siberia’s biodiversity, study and preservation of nature, solving the global ecologic problems of Siberia beginning with making agreements between governments and organizing international associations and than cooperating with various foreign organizations.
We believe that the below information will be a good starting-off point in fruitful discussions and exchange of opinions with the representatives of the EAA when discussing the most perspective vectors of cooperation with SB RAS.
| Academician N.L.Dobretsov, Vice-president of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Chairman of the Siberian Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences 630090, Novosibirsk, acad. Lavrentiev ave., 17 tel. : (3832) 35-05-67 fax: 35-00-95, 35-48-48 Email: postserv@sbras.nsc.ru |
Academician V.K.Shumny, Director of the Institute of Cytology and Genetics, Chairman of Joint Scientific Council for Biological Sciences at Siberian Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences 630090, Novosibirsk, acad. Lavrentiev ave., 10 tel.: (3832) 33-35-26, fax: 33-12-26 Email: shumny@bionet.nsc.ru root@hg.soan.nsk.su |