MOSCOW, February 10. /TASS/. Big businesses are playing a big role in the Arctic studies and cooperate in fundamental scientific studies with the Academy of Sciences' institutes and research centers. The scientific community and businesses study the climate, the Arctic geology, the ice situation, the biological diversity, said participants in a roundtable at TASS, which was devoted to complex studies in the Arctic.
"The state has been conducting Arctic studies with big businesses," Rosneft's director of the scientific and technical development and innovations, Alexander Pashali, said. "Rosneft for ten years already continues the scientific work in high latitudes, and many of those expeditions are unique, to say the least - geology, ice studies, the restored observation network across the Arctic Ocean coast, the flora and fauna studies."
Academician Arkady Tishkov of the Geography Institute (the Russian Academy of Sciences) stressed efforts of scientific institutions, no matter how great they are, cannot be sufficient to solve the complicated task of complex Arctic studies in environment and climate diversity. In this location, unique for the Earth, most important are cooperation between institutions and a high-quality data exchange, he added.
The scientist pointed to an important role big businesses have been playing in this work, when they finance various scientific projects in the region. The expert spoke about Rosneft. Thanks to that company and other big businesses Russia now has institutes of corporate sciences, which effectively add to the research, conducted by state-run scientific institutions, and which work in close cooperation with them.
"In the unified approaches, in having a state control system, and control by corporations, in the collaboration between the fundamental and corporate sciences, we are gaining new opportunities," Nikolay Shabalin of the Lomonosov Moscow State University's marine research center said.
Private interest benefits
At times, those are big businesses, that collect extremely important data on different Arctic regions, he continued. The corporate sciences, involved in solving of applied tasks, accumulate big data masses, which are of great importance for fundamental sciences.
Innopraktica's Director Vladimir Lakeyev said that in order to make results of scientific expeditions available for the scientific community, Rosneft jointly with Innopraktika (a non-governmental development institute) continues to publish books, which make a series Ecology Atlases of Russian Seas. They have published seven books: ecology atlases of the Kara, Laptev, Black and Azov Seas, and the Biology Indicators of Arctic Marine Ecosystems atlas. Before 2026, they will publish another seven atlases.
Tishkov and Shabalin stressed that big companies invest not just in applied research to solve narrow tasks - they cooperate closely with state-run research institutions and jointly conduct fundamental studies that do not have an instant return, but which are long-term investments in sciences. Rosneft, in particular, regularly finances multidisciplinary expeditions to the Arctic on most up-to-date vessels. Since 2014, the company actively assisted exploration of the Eastern Arctic seas, which have not been studies as well as the Barents and Kara Seas. As of now, the company has organized more than 40 expeditions along the entire Arctic Ocean coast.
Innopraktika and the Russian Academy of Sciences' institutions have cooperated in drilling of the northernmost geological wells in the Kara Sea, in studying the Chukchi and Laptev Seas, Rosneft's representative continued. By analyzing the lifted core scientists will make a most reliable geological model of the Russian Arctic. Joint projects, featuring big businesses and the Academy's institutions, pay great attention to traditional scientific aspects - to meteorology and ice conditions, which directly affect the Arctic navigation, he added.
New projects
In recent years Rosneft has focused on monitoring the Arctic ecosystems and biological diversity, the company's representative Alexander Pashali continued. Rosneft, together with the Lomonosov Moscow State University and the country's leading research institutes, monitors populations of animals that are at the top of the food chain. Scientists observe polar bears, walruses, white gulls and wild reindeer. For example, they tag female polar bears to watch their movements.
Rosneft, together with Innopraktika, plans to start within the current year the White Sea studies to see how climatic and local anthropogenic factors affect the Arctic marine ecosystems. The project's base would be the White Sea Biological Station of the Lomonosov Moscow State University, Pashali said. Scientists will use the White Sea as a model to analyze the current state of Arctic seas, thus repeating one-century-old observations by Konstantin Deryugin, a famous researcher and zoologist.