ST. PETERSBURG, May 17. /TASS/. The Murmansk Region (the Kola Peninsula) will be one of the first locations for the national permafrost monitoring system, Oleg Volkov, head of the Arctic Resource Center, a foundation for support of scientific research, told TASS following a meeting on the system's development.

President Vladimir Putin has pointed to the importance of a national network of systems to monitor permafrost. The systems will be used to model and predict climate change to prevent negative impacts on the economy and the quality of life, and to contribute to the trouble-free operation of infrastructures in permafrost areas, that take more than half of the Russian territory.

"We have agreed that the Arctic and Antarctic (Research) Institute and the Arctic Resource Center Foundation will enter an agreement on a competence center - a project office to develop a concept for a geotechnical environmental monitoring system in the Russian Federation's Arctic Zone," the foundation's representative said. "The Murmansk Region will be involved in work of the future project office, which will begin in May this year, and the Murmansk Region will surely be one of the first monitoring sites."

The perennially frozen soils degradation will affect almost every Russian, he continued. "To varying degrees, but in any case, the consequences will be negative for everyone. Today, we plan to make a system that should compensate for these negative consequences, and, taking into account the dynamics of natural changes and the development of territories with frozen soils, this needs to be done with minimal errors and quickly enough."

Alexander Makarov, Director of the Arctic and Antarctic Research Institute (AARI, St. Petersburg), noted that the trend of permafrost soils degradation is vital not only for the Arctic, but for the entire country. "We must be ready not only to respond to these processes, but to make maximum efforts to minimize the anthropogenic impact on nature," he said.

The closed workshop on development of a system to monitor permafrost was held at the Polar 2024 international scientific and business conference in St. Petersburg. AARI was the event's organizer.