ARKHANGELSK, May 25. /TASS/. Specialists of the Russian Arctic National Park under the Clean Arctic project jointly with Rosneft studied the ability of Arctic soils to self-cleaning from petroleum products, the park’s press service said.
The studies were organized on the Franz Josef Land Archipelago’s islands.
"Results of the studies have confirmed that over less than a decade the petroleum products concentrations in soils in the national park dropped in certain areas by up to ten times," the press service said. "Thus, the scientists have confirmed the high ability for self-cleaning by natural processes."
In 2012-2017, on the Franz Josef Land and on the Novaya Zemlya archipelagos were pulled down ruining buildings and infrastructures of the abandoned polar stations, and all the waste was collected and transported to the mainland for further processing. "Petroleum products in the Arctic territories, which were developed in the Soviet time, are the biggest pollutants, as they have been brought there and stored in big amounts. In case of spills, petroleum products over short times contaminate big areas on the surface and penetrate into the soil to the depth of the seasonal-thawing layer," the press service quoted the national park’s Director Alexander Kirilov as saying.
In 2019-2021, the national park’s specialists and experts of the Russian Academy of Sciences’ Institute of Geography sampled soils on the Heiss and the Alexandra Land islands following cleaning missions there, and suggested how the soils could be remedied with a minimal damage to the ecology system. During the studies, the experts found bacteria, which can destroy petroleum products at low temperatures (at 2-6 degrees). "The studies have proved that petroleum products do not affect greatly the flora in the Arctic desert, and some species of algae and mosses respond gratefully to insignificant amounts of petroleum products in the soil, since for plants they are a source of additional organic matter," the press service quoted Dmitry Kryukov, an advisor to the national park’s director, as saying.
The Russian Arctic National Park is Eurasia’s northernmost and Russia’s biggest nature reserve. It includes the Franz Josef Land archipelago and the northern part of the Novaya Zemlya archipelago.