TOMSK, Apr 11 – RIA Tomsk. Tomsk State University (TSU) and the International Network for Terrestrial Research and Monitoring in the Arctic INERACT to create an educational site which will introduce users to the Arctic with the help of computer animation, 3D tours, infographics and other tools, the university press service representative reported RIA Tomsk on Wednesday.
According to her, the site will tell about permafrost, about adaptation of microbes to survival on ice and snow, about greenhouse gases and warming, about what happens in new conditions with animals, plants and people, and much more. The author of the idea and the project leader is the professor of TSU and University of Sheffield, one of the most famous researchers of the Arctic Terry Callaghan.
"The new educational resource will be completely open and free. This project is designed for a very wide audience. Its users can be schoolchildren, teachers, students, lecturers, scientists and people completely remote from science, but having an interest in global changes happening on our planet", – the interlocutor of the agency quoted Callaghan.
She added that the site will be English-language, and its launch is scheduled for 2019. For a better perception of the information, various presentation formats will be used here: small text files in the form of stories, computer graphics, 3D tours to scientific stations of the international INTERACT network, and a 3D tour to the high-altitude base of TSU Aktru, where Russian and foreign scientists conduct their researches."On this updated resource will be presented the data from the latest Arctic studies, both already published in profile journals and planned for printing. As the resource will combine a very large amount of test and graphic information, we consider the option of placing it on the basis of the TSU SKIF Cyberia computing cluster. The developers plan to create two versions - for browsers and mobile devices", – she said.
The prototype of the digital project was the book "INTERACT Stories of Arctic Science", in preparation of which 120 experts from different countries participated. One of his editors was Professor Callaghan, who received the Nobel Peace Prize in 2007 as part of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.