TOMSK, Jul 2 – RIA Tomsk. Scientists from University of York are planning to find out whether the Vasyugan Swamp will fully cool the Earth in the future; they studied peat bogs at the station of Tomsk State University (TSU), located at the Vasyugan Swamp, and used local innovative equipment for data collection, the press service of the university said on Monday.
It is specified that Tomsk and British scientists visited the Vasyugan Swamp, where the stationary research station of TSU is located. British experts studied peat bogs, which absorb greenhouse gases from the atmosphere – carbon and methane – and play an important role in cooling the planet.
"The researchers carried out a sampling of the upper layers of peat (at the Vasyugan Swamp). At University of York they will be botanically analyzed and examined for amoebic tests with a silicon shell which remains in the peat for a long time. The scientists will assess what the carbon concentration was over the last 150-200 years, how the climate was changing and what was the response of the water level to these events", – is said in the statement.
It is added that the British scientists plan to make a forecast, whether peat bogs will be able to be full-fledged "refrigerators" of the Earth in the future. It is noted that for the first time in its practice foreign specialists used the Tomsk innovative IT-product, which greatly simplified the work on sampling."Usually in expedition to fix the data it is necessary to use notepad and camera. Now colleagues could put all the data into the tablet on which the SISGEO program is installed. It automatically maps the territory, makes binding of points of selection by coordinates and time using GPS. At the output there is almost ready report", – the director of the BioClimLand Centre of Excellence Sergey Kirpotin is quoted.
It is added that scientists will draw the final conclusions on the basis of information gathered in different parts of the world – in Alaska, Kamchatka and in Western Siberia and other regions: "Emphasis will be made on reconstruction of paleoecological data on the largest and poorly studied objects, one of which is the Vasyugan Swamp".