Russian Visiting Scholars Program

The Woods Hole Research Center’s Russian Visiting Scholars Program, initiated in 1992, provides Russian forest ecologists the opportunity to spend up to three months in Woods Hole learning state-of-the-art technologies used in forest ecology, advancing shared goals in research on forests, and visiting other field sites and research organizations. The program provides an isolated and economically disadvantaged Russian scholarly community with training, financial and intellectual support, opportunities to interact with the international environmental community, and continuing opportunities in research and education upon return to Russia. We request, on an annual basis, a grant from the Trust for Mutual Understanding to continue this established program.

Introduction

The international environmental community can be an advocate for the conservation of the Russian forests, yet the management and sustainable use of the forest must rest with the Russian people. All forestry research organizations in Russia are strapped for cash, have had to let go many or most of their workers, and need to seek new mechanisms to support their efforts. Clearly, much of this support will have to come from the international community. We need to increase international interest in the vital ecological role that these giant forests assume as climate stabilizers and as habitat, support the most able Russian forest ecologists and conservationists, and integrate Russian forest ecologists into the international conservation and science community.

The Center’s Russian Visiting Scholars Program is an important effort towards reaching this broad goal – assisting Russians to manage their forest for the maximum long-term good and for the benefit of all.

Objectives

The objectives of the Russian Visiting Scholar Program are threefold:

• to expand opportunities in experience and training of Russian forest ecologists
• to collaborate on research projects on the great forests of Russia and
• to introduce Russian forest ecologists to international symposia, global research efforts, and funding sources not normally available in Russia.

Benefit

The Russian Visiting Scholars program is mutually beneficial: our Russian colleagues are exposed to state-of-the-art technologies available at the Center and to the many projects, scholarly activities, and collaborators of the Center. In addition, they learn how science is conducted in the US. We benefit tremendously from their knowledge of the Russian forests. This program has helped make the Woods Hole Research Center a global resource for research on Russian forests.

The program has been very successful. Russian Visiting Scholars who have participated in the program have remained actively engaged as forest and soil ecologists in Russia despite social and economic chaos. They have greatly improved their international presence through repeated attendance at symposiums and through publications that meet international scientific standards.

In summary, the program creates lasting and fruitful international collaborations by providing, during a visit, access to Internet, email, telephone, libraries, scientific and development staff, funding agencies, and university and government scholars. While here, Russian scientists are freed from demanding routines at home, encouraged to explore perspectives of their own country from the outside, and helped to cast aside cultural fears through social interactions with staff.  In addition, the members of the center provide encouragement to Russian women scholars, something uncommon within Russia.

Russian Visiting Scholars

Since 1993 the Center has hosted approximately thirteen Russian Visiting Scholars. All remain engaged in research despite the extraordinarily difficult working conditions and an almost total lack of Russian federal support. Many have been able to use their experiences to gather international support for their activities including support from France, the US Forest Service, private foundations, and the European community. The fellowship program has opened new possibilities for Russian forest scholars and enabled us to explore new channels for collaboration. Our experience has been focused on staff of the Sukachev Institute of Forest Research in Krasnoyarsk, Siberia and more recently on two forestry research organizations in St. Petersburg, Russia.

Dr. Igor Olennikov, Buryatia (March 2003 June 2003)

Igor Valerievich Olennikov arrived in Woods Hole March 18, 2003. Igor is from Russia's southeast Siberian region of Buryatia (on the Mongolian border). He holds a doctorate of Geography from the East Siberian University of Technology in Ulan Ude. Igor's area of specialization is geo-ecology and he has been working in the office of the Chair of the Department of Ecology at the University since 1996. His professional interests concern practical questions of environment and sustainable development of Lake Baikal region territories using GIS and remote sensing technologies. He has experience with the US Tahoe-Baikal Institute and was a member of the geography faculty of Buryatia State University from 1989-1994. He has worked extensively as a consultant to the Buryat Regional Department (BRD) on Lake Baikal in preserving unique boreal ecosystems of that territory, authoring maps estimating human impacts in southern boreal forest ecosystems. He is currently developing remotely sensed analyses for Protection of the Trans-Baikal Territory , a BRD project partly funded by the former W. Alton Jones Foundation.

Dr. Gennady Lazarev, Kamchatka (Dec 2002- March 2003)

Visiting Scholar Gennady Alexandrovich Lazarev came to the Center from Kamchatka in December 2002. He has a PhD in Forestry, and has worked at the Kamchatka Forest Experimental Station since 1981. He has been the Director of that station since 1990. Gennady teaches locally at four Kamchatka institutes and universities in ecology, general biology, biogeography, environmental studies, and soil biology. He previously visited the US in 1998 when he trained at the Ecology Center in Missoula, Montana for 2 months. Gennady was a cofounder of the Russian NGO “Kamchatka League of Independent Experts (KLIE)” in 1996. KLIE provides independent expert advice, public comments, and reviews to ensure that proposed natural resource extraction projects are not approved without meeting the highest environmental standards. KLIE also works towards developing Kamchatka's network of protected territories.

Gennady's research in Woods Hole was to identify, acquire (and later verify in the field) satellite imagery of the remaining conifer forests of Kamchatka. Specifically, he identified primary conifer forests that have been untouched by logging and fire; collected basic data about the position of the logging areas, fire areas, other areas altered by man and second growth forests within the main conifer region of Kamchatka. He hopes to estimate the volume of the timber in these conifer forests that might be exploited sustainably; assess changes in the “quality” of the conifer forests over the last fifty years; and, forecast the destiny of these old conifer forests if current trends continue.

Evgeniy Gladyshev

Evgeniy Gladyshev   (Spring 2001, Spring 2003)

Evgeniy Gladyshev came to us from Vladivostok. He recently graduated from Yale University's School of Forestry and Environmental Studies (May 2003) and received a diploma of Master of Environmental Sciences. He thesis investigation was on Siberian tiger genetics (using tiger scat) and from this he learned that the population of tigers in his region of Primorsky Russia all stem from the same pair of tigers. Evgeniy will begin work this fall (2003) on a 5-year PhD program in molecular genetics at Harvard University with a full scholarship under Dr. Matthew Meselson.

Dr. Vladislav Alexeyev (Spring 1996; Spring & Fall 1997, Spring 1998, 1999, 2000, 2001, 2006)

Dr. Vladislav Alexeyev

Dr. Alexeyev is a Senior Scientist in Forest Ecology Laboratory, Sukachev Institute of Forest and Timber in Krasnoyarsk, Russia. He has published with the US Forest Service an unprecedented book on the carbon content of Russian forests. Dr. Alexeyev has also been collaborating with Boston University and has help to map the location of forest areas in the northern hemisphere that serve as major "carbon sinks" - specific areas where carbon from the atmosphere is stored in the wood of trees. This work was published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) in December 2001. Dr Alexeyev was recently (April 2003) in Pennsylvania working with the US Forest Service on a new book. Dr. Alexeyev is now (2006) with the Saint-Petersburg Forest Ecological Center and the Saint-Petersburg Research Institute of Forestry

Dr. Nikolay Minko (March 2001 June 2001)

Dr. Minko arrived in Woods Hole in March from Irkutsk where he works at the Institute of Solar Terrestrial Physics. This was his first visit outside Russia in his life as well as his first visit ever to Moscow. Together, we are looked at high and low-resolution data of fires in eastern Russia. Nikolay is an atmospheric physicist who produces AVHRR satellite fire maps for central and far eastern Russia. Examples can be found on the WWW at http://ckm.iszf.irk.ru/index_e.htm.

While here, he was invited to NASA HQ in Washington DC to attend the 11 th Russian/US Earth Sciences Working Group meeting where he presented his research. We were delighted to get Nikolay into this meeting as he is not from the hand picked Moscow elite typically chosen and he is pursuing work directly relevant to our efforts on forest fires in the Russian Far East. This meeting will increase both the probability that Nikolay will get both improved internet access (bandwidth) in Irkutsk and possibly another satellite receiving station for either MODIS or LANDSAT 7 satellite data – both of which he could distribute freely. From Irkutsk, he is ideally located geographically to cover all of Siberia and the Russian Far East. As with all visiting scholars, we have provided a new laptop computer and appropriate GIS software to Dr. Minko.

Dr. Peter Litinsky (Fall 1999)

Dr Litinsky is from the Forest Research Institute of Petrozavodsk (about 300 km N of St. Petersburg). He is an expert on old growth forests and the decline in regional forests due to ore smelting activities along the Finno-Russian border of the Russian Karelia. We obtained for Mr. Litinsky copies of high-resolution satellite imagery of his region from the Landsat 7 satellite, imagery from the Indian IRS 1-C satellite, and provided him with IDRISI GIS software. While here he created several preliminary maps of both old growth forest and maps showing the increase in the rate of forest decline in the vicinity of the Kostomushka smelter along the Finnish border. Some of this work was presented to Mr. Richard Lanier in NYC in November 1999.

Viacheslav (Slava) Cherkashin (Spring 1993, Summer 1998)

Slava Cherkashin is a Senior Research Associate at the Sukachev Institute of Forest and Timber, Krasnoyarsk, Russia. A GIS expert, he is currently working with the Krasnoyarsk satellite receiving station to develop methods to map forests, study insect outbreaks, monitor urban pollution and evaluate the productivity of natural systems. In addition, he collaborates with the U.S. Forest Service to develop new methods to understand Siberian forests. We also supported Mr. Cherkashin’s travel to a forest ecology conference in Boise, Idaho and to NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in July and August 1998. He also presented his work in Woods Hole to WHRC staff.  

Dr. Alexandra Volokitina

Dr. Alexandra Volokitina   (Fall 1998)

Dr Volokitina is an internationally known expert on forest fires in Russia and, in particular, works to develop forest fuel maps that predict fire severity and growth when combined with meteorological data. She is from Krasnoyarsk, Siberia and works at the Sukachev Institute. She presented her work in May 2000 in Edmonton, Canada at the conference “The Role of Boreal Forests and Forestry in the Global Carbon Budget”.

Dr. Michael Tarasov ( Fall 1997)

Dr. Michael Tarasov

Dr. Tarasov was a graduate student working with The Research Institute for Forest Management, St. Petersburg, Russia. While in Woods Hole, he constructed a field system for measuring CO₂ respiration from soils. This "CO₂ backpack” significantly improved his and his colleagues' ability to conduct research on soils. Mr. Tarasov returned to Russia to begin a field program in the spring of 1998 to study belowground respiration and the decomposition of large dead woody components of the forest floor in the region of St. Petersburg and the Karelian Isthmus, which became the basis of his PhD Thesis.

Dr. Boris Romanyuk (Spring 1997)

Dr. Romanyuk is a Senior Researcher at the Research Institute for Forest Management, St. Petersburg, Russia. He came to the WHRC for an extended stay in early 1997, where he continued his research on landscape approaches to forest management, planning, and protection. In August 1997, Dr. Romanyuk presented his work at the Intl. Boreal Forest Research Assoc. (IBFRA) symposium in Duluth, Minnesota. More recently, Boris has become the scientific director of the WWF-supported Pskov Model forest (near the Latvian Border). At the project, Boris has introduced new principles for forest inventory that have been developed by the Northwest Forest Inventory Enterprise based on ecological landscape planning. This approach is new in Russian forestry practices, so the Project experts have done a great deal of work to adapt the main elements of landscape forest planning to local conditions.

Drs. Anatoly Shwidenko & Vladislav Rozhkov (March 1997)

Dr. Shwidenko of the International Institute of Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA) of Luxemburg, Austria arrived in March with Dr. Rozhkov of the Dokuchaev Soils Institute of Moscow for two months of work at the Center. Dr. Shwidenko is the former Chief of Mensuration in the Soviet Union and one of the world's foremost authorities on the role of the Russian forests in the global carbon cycle. Dr. Rozhkov is one of the foremost soil experts of Russia. We have developed several projects together including a proposed circumpolar boreal forest map and forest and soil databases for use in global carbon research. Dr. Shwidenko was also host of the recent conference (Dec. ‘99) at IIASA (Stone attended) whose focus was the role of remote sensing in the implementing the Kyoto Protocol with a particular emphasis on Russia and the FSU.

Dr. Alexander Lioubimov (Spring 1996)

Dr. Lioubimov is a member of the Forestry Faculty of the St. Petersburg Forest Technical Academy in St. Petersburg, Russia. Dr. Lioubimov continues to work with the European Forestry Institute (EFI) in Joeensuu, Finland. In December 2002, he helped to organize with EFI a conference in St. Petersburg entitled the “Economic Accessibility of Forest Resources in Northwest Russia”. Also at the EFI’s Project Center in St. Petersburg, he is the leader on the project entitled “Forest Resource Scenario Modeling for the European Part of Russia.”

Dr. Alexander Bondarev (Winter 1995)

Dr. Bondarev has been since early 2000 the Project Coordinator of the Altai-Sayan Eco region Millennium Ecosystems Assessment program supported by the World Wildlife Fund. Alexander has also helped with developing certified forest products from the forests of central Siberia. This April (2003) he attended a meeting on the “Status and trends of, and threats to, mountain biodiversity, marine, coastal and inland water ecosystems” at the eighth meeting of the UNEP sponsored Subsidiary Body on Scientific, Technical and Technological Advice of the Convention on Biological Diversity. Alexander is also manager for the UNDP-GEF PDF- BLOCK B “Regional biodiversity conservation in the Altai-Sayan Mountain Eco-region: Phase I” project

Boris Klimushin (Spring 1993)

Boris is a forestry database expert at the Sukachev Institute of Forest and Timber, Krasnoyarsk, Russia.   He continues to work with Dr. Alexandra Sasha Volokitina on forest fires.

Alexander (Sasha) B. Latyntzev (Spring 1993)

Sasha is a highly skilled programmer who worked in the fire monitoring and modeling laboratory of Anatoly Sukhinin at the Sukachev Institute. He uses Russian and US satellite data to monitor fire, predict its path, and direct the operations of Russian aerial fire fighting efforts.

	Vadim Kirichenko

Vadim Kirichenko (Fall 2004)

Vadim is a GIS expert at the Kamchatka League of Independent Experts in Petropavlosk. He has 15 years of fieldwork experience. While here, Vadim worked with Tom Stone and Peter Schlesinger to update vegetation maps of Kamchatka using satellite imagery, and explored possibilities for additional collaborations. Vadim also made a presentation to Center staff on his past project involvement in Kamchatka and the current threats to the environment from geothermal energy plants, gas pipelines and salmon poaching. Vadim is a colleague of a previous visiting scholar from Kamchatka, Dr. Gennady Lazarev. Vadim’s travels here were co-hosted by the Big Sky Conservation Institute of Missoula, Montana. During his visit, Vadim attended a Society for Conservation GIS conference and received training in ESRI's ArcView software in West Virginia.

Mikhail (Misha) Paltsyn (November 2005)

Misha is the director of the non-profit organization, Arkhar NGO, of the Altai Republic, Russia, a group working for the conservation of two highly endangered and charismatic species, the snow leopard and Argali, a central Asian big horn sheep. He has a master’s degree in zoology and ecology from Moscow State University. While at the Woods Hole Research Center, Misha acquired satellite images to help in the study of range degradation in Altai argali habitats due to intensive livestock grazing. The images will also be used to look for possible habitats of the highly endangered snow leopard.

Misha Paltsyn employs satellite imagery for conservation of endangered species in Russia.

While in Washington D.C., Misha met with representatives of the Nature Conservancy, WWF-USA, International Snow Leopard Trust, Snow Leopard Conservancy, Denver Zoological Foundation, WildAid, International Fund for Animal Welfare, Wild Land Security, and the Foundation for Altai Sustainable Development. He provided the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) with information about his region and has proposed to do snow leopard research in the Argut River Basin, one of the most important snow leopard regions in the Altai-Sayan region. He is also planning to work with WCS to create a larger project for Altai argali and snow leopard conservation in Altai Republic, Russia. While at the Woods Hole Research Center, he wrote two proposals for WWF-Russia on anti-poaching activities in Altai and Tuva in cooperation with Game Departments of these Republics. Misha is now (2006) Endangered Species Group Leader for the Altai-Sayan UNDP/GEF project.

Dr. Maxim Markov (Winter 2006)

Maxim arrived in late 2005. Maxim has worked at the Federal St. Petersburg Forest Research Inst. in St. Petersburg for 9 years. Recently, he successfully defended his Ph.D. thesis (aspirantura) about climate change and forest productivity. Maxim has significant experience in Russian forestry practices and he regularly makes field trips for ecological research to experimental forestry enterprises in the Leningrad, Pskov, Novgorod, Murmansk, Kirov, and Caucasus regions. He has published 8 articles on his research. Dr. Markov has studied in Holland. This was his first trip to the USA.

His current research is investigating air pollution damage to forests in Karelia near the Finnish border with Russia. While visiting with us he traveled to forests in Massachusetts and Maine with colleagues from the New England Forestry Foundation.

Other Russian Ecologists Supported in Part by the Visiting Scholar Program

Dr. Andrei Laletin , a forest ecologist from Krasnoyarsk and the Sukachev Institute, who was visiting the US with support from US AID, Nov. 1996. Dr. Laletin now works with IUCN in Montreal, Canada.

Dr. Kira Kobuk of the State Hydrological Inst., St. Petersburg, May 1996

Dr. Marina Botch of the Komarov Botanical Inst., St. Petersburg, May 1996

Mr. Dmitry Varlyguin , NASA Graduate Fellow, Clark Univ., Worcester, Mass., several visits

©Woods Hole Research Center, 2007