NOVOSIBIRSK, September 15. /TASS/. Experts of the Russian Academy of Sciences, participating in the Great Norilsk Expedition, will organize in Norilsk a permanent monitoring of the environment. This project is a part of the agreement with Nornickel, the Siberian Branch’s Chairman Valentin Parmon told reporters on Tuesday.

The Siberian Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences for the first time in recent years has sent to the Taimyr Peninsula, at the invitation of Nornickel, a big scientific expedition to conduct a large-scale examination of the area. Scientists will use the expedition’s results to present suggestions for industrial companies, working in the Arctic, on how to preserve the nature.

“We plan to organize permanent monitoring in key locations, which means it would not be an expedition, but rather a long-term project,” Parmon said. “We are to assist in restoration of the ecosystem – it cannot recover within a month or a year, this process requires observation.”

According to the scientist, experts will use existing infrastructures to organize the monitoring. For example, the Academy’s Institute of Agriculture and Ecology is located in Norilsk. On the other hand, Nornickel’s Vice President Andrei Grachev supported the initiative, voiced by Academician Alexei Kontorovich, to have quarterly ecology monitoring missions off helicopters.

“We are grateful to the Siberian scientists for this expedition,” Nornickel’s press service told TASS referring to the company’s President Vladimir Potanin. “Nornickel as the region’s industrial leader realizes its responsibility for the nature and Taimyr’s population and is ready to review its ecology policies. For almost a century, Taimyr has been exposed to man-made effects, and it is most important for us to learn the true situation, so that we could move from emotion to action. We shall continue the cooperation with sciences in this direction.”

The expedition’s key points were watersheds of the Rivers Pyasina, Norilka and Ambarnaya, and Lake Pyasino. The expedition’s term is five months – from July to November. Before end of August, experts from 14 research institutes of the Academy of Sciences’ Siberian Branch have collected samples of soils, plants and sediments, and now they work on tests at the institutes’ labs. First results may be expected in November-December, 2020.