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UNESCO-MSU floating university expedition focuses on Barents Sea’s hydrocarbon systems

The expedition’s results are expected to make a major input in development of the Arctic shelf and will be used in analyzing the global climate changes

MOSCOW, September 16. /TASS/. Students and scientists during the expedition of the floating university, organized by UNESCO and the Lomonosov Moscow State University (MSU), will study the northern Barents Sea’s hydrocarbon systems, the Ministry of Science and Higher Education said on Wednesday.

"The UNESCO-MSU floating university expedition to the northern part of the Barents Sea has begun," the ministry’s press service said. "Participants in the jubilee, 20th, voyage (TTR-20) will research a most understudied area in the Western Arctic - between the archipelagoes Novaya Zemlya and Franz Josef Land."

"The expedition on board the Akademik Nikolay Strakhov research-survey vessel will continue to October 14," the press service added.

More than 20 students, post-graduates, young scientists and university specialists, as well as experts from Russian and European scientific organizations will study the structure and genesis (origins) of the bottom sediments in the northern part of the Barents Sea shelf. The floating university’s participants will conduct geophysical, geochemical, geological, hydro-chemical and microbiological studies.

"The Arctic is a rich region: it keeps huge deposits of oil, gas and other resources, and thus development of the Arctic shelf is a priority for Russia," the press service continued. "The floating university participants will analyze the region’s hydrocarbon systems and will survey the quaternary glacial paleo cover evolution, which existed there and some traces of which still remain on the modern sea bottom."

The expedition’s results are expected to make a major input in development of the Arctic shelf and will be used in analyzing the global climate changes.

The UNESCO-MSU floating university’s participants represent the following institutions: the University of Oslo (Norway), and Russia’s Sergeyev Geo-Ecology Institute, Institute of Oceanology, Schmidt Institute of Earth’s Physics, Bioengineering Center, Limnological Institute (Siberian Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences), Center for Marine Studies at the Lomonosov Moscow State University, Gramberg Institute for Geology and Mineral Resources of the Ocean.

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