NOVOSIBIRSK, April 25. /TASS/. The analysis of man-made impacts on the Arctic ecosystem and work on methods to distinguish between natural and man-made reasons for changes in living systems would be tasks for a big scientific expedition, which the Russian Academy of Sciences’ Siberian Branch will organize in 2022 with the support from the Norilsk Nickel Company, the Siberian Branch’s official magazine Science in Siberia reported.

In 2022, scientists, representing the Siberian Branch’s several institutes, supported by Norilsk Nickel (Nornickel), for the first time since the 1990s will conduct large-scale comprehensive biodiversity studies in the areas of the company’s businesses on the Kola Peninsula, in the north of the Krasnoyarsk Region and in the Trans-Baikal Region.

"Our task is to analyze how human activities influence not just separate species or groups of species, but complexes, which make the ecosystem, and, thus, to give a comprehensive analysis of the biodiversity <…> Such an approach is very rare in our sciences, thus it is extremely important to structure most correctly the field works and sampling," the magazine quoted Nikolay Lishchinsky of the Siberian Branch’s Central Siberian Botanical Garden as saying.

In winter, zoologists estimated fauna counting on the Taimyr Peninsula, the magazine added.

"The winter calculations of the fauna on the Taimyr are very complicated due to the extreme weather conditions. Even the Ministry of Natural Resources officially recommends against making them. Nevertheless, the data we wanted was collected mostly thanks to the support from the Taimyr Nature Reserves experts, who have been very helpful," Yury Litvinov of the Institute of Systematics and Ecology of Animals (Novosibirsk) said.

According to the magazine, scientists will use regular and pioneering technologies in the field season’s work.

In 2020, the Russian Academy of Sciences’ Siberian Branch for the first time in recent years sent to the Taimyr at the invitation from Nornickel a great scientific expedition to study thoroughly and to estimate the impact on the environment from the oil spill at the Norilsk thermal power plant. In 2021, the second Great Norilsk Expedition analyzed water, soils, sediments, flora, fish and animals, as well as perennially frozen grounds. The teams featured experts from 14 research institutes, based in Norilsk, Yakutsk, Irkutsk, Krasnoyarsk, Novosibirsk, Tomsk and Barnaul.