Status Report About Understanding, Monitoring and Controlling Landscape Processes in Siberia

Abstract

Siberia has experienced significant transformations over the past 70 years and particularly since the introduction of the market economy 25 years ago. This has caused implications for landscape processes and for the status of terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems. We review the role of science and technology in monitoring, understanding and developing Siberian landscapes. Data sources were international literature and own expeditions and studies. Russia has great traditions in landscape research disciplines such as geography, soil science, hydrology and agronomy. Substantial progress has been achieved in all these fields over the past 25 years. We found particular progress in landscape research based on international projects in the fields of Arctic research, climate change and carbon cycle. Other fields such as agricultural research remained traditional and underdeveloped. In the 1990s there was a great shift of knowledge and technology in the better-interlinked English-speaking European scientific community. In Russia, at the same time, the introduction of the market economy accelerated environmental problems, caused a greater discrepancy between the livelihoods of urban and rural populations, created new knowledge gaps and enlarged the gap between theory and practice in landscape research. The decay of infrastructure in rural landscapes produced an inhospitable environment for science and technology. In view of this, landscape research in Siberia and in the Far East remained very traditional. Other deficits were based on a lack of communication with the international community due to language barriers. Cooperation between leading Russian and European scientists is still poorly developed and funded. The Russian academic scientific system was highly organized until 2013. However, efficiency was low and scientific outputs did not meet the requirements of decision-makers. The ongoing reform of the academic system entails the risk that precisely the opposite to the desired effects of higher efficiency could come true, such as accelerated brain drain and loss of objectivity. We conclude that Trans-Eurasian research cooperation is becoming very important in the current critical transition phase. Modern analytical methods, sophisticated technologies, models and evaluation schemes for landscape research and environmentally friendly soil management technologies are available in the English-speaking community. Substantial progress in monitoring, understanding and controlling landscape processes in the framework of international research projects could be achieved by applying new research methods in Siberia. We present some of them in the following chapters of this book.