Vasyugan diplomacy: how swamp befriended Tomsk and Britain residents

TOMSK, Jul 13 – RIA Tomsk. Amoebas with armor "preserved" in Vasyugan swamp help British swamp experts to learn how climate on Earth changed for the last 200 years. They collected samples with assistance of colleagues from Tomsk State University (TSU). What adventures scientists found in "world refrigerator" and why climate goes into hysterics – in material of RIA Tomsk.

World refrigerator

The big Vasyugan swamp has the size about Switzerland. The fourth part of all carbon which is saved up by land ecosystems is stored in swamps of Western Siberia … Learning these facts from the director of the Center of Excellence BioClimLand of TSU Sergey Kirpotin, the British sincerely were surprised. No, they, of course, knew that Siberia is one of the few places on Earth where huge untouched swamps remained. But that such!.

"There are no wild swamps in Europe – they are all drained, reclaimed. Unless there are a few in Scotland... There are in Canada. Our British guests worked in this country too, but there all the same both mountains, and ridges, and there are no such huge boggy spaces, as at us. Therefore if people are engaged in studying of swamps, there is no place of more worthy for this purpose, than Siberia", – Kirpotin claims.

And swamps, he emphasizes, are necessary to be studied – they play incredibly important role in regulation of global climate. The scientist calls Vasyugan "the world refrigerator" which doesn't allow the atmosphere to heat up:

"The swamps located in the South (as our Vasyugan), withdraw carbon from the atmosphere. Roughly speaking, they "seal" died plants in peat bogs and don't allow them to emit carbon. Namely carbon dioxide and methane – carbon is in their basis – create greenhouse effect.  It turns out, we save Earth, but it is a huge problem for us: swamps continue to grow, they crawl over the woods on all edge about 20-30-40 meters in a year".

On the contrary swamp emits methane in the north. It is real methane "bomb". The situation with climate in many respects depends on how process of a swamp formation will go further.

Swamp buggy for friends

Dmitry Maukoy, Luke Andrews and William Jessop – scientists from York (Dmitry, by the way, is a thoroughbred British, but his parents love the Russian names very much). They arrived to Tomsk according to the international program of researches and monitoring in the Arctic of INTERACT where TSU and York University enter. Within this program  annually 3-4 groups of foreigners come to TSU stations.

"Terry Callaghan, the research supervisor of INTERACT, often applies the concept "scientific diplomacy". Politicians quarreled, these processes continue in science, and we have an opportunity to show that Siberia is not frozen kingdom where there is no place of creativity. That science here is absolutely tremendous, and people are even better: they won't betray and won't leave, will give away the shirt off back", – Kirpotin is sure.

Dmitry, Luke and William didn't begin to hide: they read about Russia a lot before a trip, and people frightened them everywhere that people unfriendly here. But, having arrived to the place, the British scientists were convinced: there are a lot of fakes in the Internet. If not the Russian hospitality, the modest budget of scientists wouldn't be enough to organize a full-fledged expedition to the swamp.

"The expedition was held under the motto "a friend in court is better than a penny in purse", – Kirpotin smiles.

During the first trial trip to the swamp it was necessary to go by feet a lot. Usually raised bogs dry up to the middle of summer, and here it turned out that there is waist-deep water. We went a kilometer somehow, have lost both forces, and will, and we had still go back with samples!

Then Sergey Fedko, the director of the university station "Vasyuganskaya" agreed with friends to take a snow and swamp-going vehicle "Phantom" (by the way, created in Tomsk) that to take though somewhere the British colleagues …

"I didn't observe such water level for many years. It is a apecial year: was a lot of snow, because of it there were strong floods. In June thunderstorms went constantly. As a result water level doesn't fall, swamps don't unload, all marsh rivers deep as in the spring. To find the sites suitable for sampling attracted locals as conductors", – Kirpotin remembers.

Even using the swamp buggy we could pass only on the reclaimed part of the Vasyugan Swamp. We took samples, standing knee-deep in water.

Dry riams – raised bogs – managed to be found only in the Region of Moryakovka. Such were necessary to the British: there is a cool and acidic environment, and local "living creatures" remain in peat, as in the refrigerator.

"First of all colleagues were interested in special amoebas with a silicon armor. On its structure it is possible to keep the chronicle of climate as amoebas react to the hydrological mode very strongly. They collected samples and would already estimate climate changes for the last two-three centuries in the laboratories", – Kirpotin explains.

By the way, the British were going to use a good old notebook and a handle for fixing of data. They also were surprised when residents of Tomsk have shown them the innovative IT product created by the Tomsk company "Ingeotekh" – the SISGEO program. It reduced the volume of "manual" work approximately by 70%.

By means of SISGEO all field data are recorded in the tablet where the software is installed. The program automatically maps the territory, makes a binding of points of selection on coordinates and time through GPS. All text and visual information including received from the drone is brought together.

How the climate will change

Perhaps, researches of the British will help to understand where the climatic system will move further, they need "chronicle" of the Vasyugan swamp for this purpose.

"To know the present and to make predictions for the future, it is necessary to accurately represent the past", – Kirpotin says and emphasizes that making forecasts now is an extremely thankless task.

"The Nobel laureate, the Belgian of the Russian origin Ilya Prigozhin described how an order arises from chaos in chemical systems. He drawn a conclusion: when the difficult system passes from one thermodynamic state into another, there is a point of bifurcation. Development of the system can almost with identical probability go in two mutually exclusive directions in such point ", – he explains.

Climate is unconditional the most difficult system, and its development can go both towards the amplifying warming, and to Ice Age, as in the movie "The day after tomorrow".

"Someone of meteorologists calls climate nervous, I call it hysterical. The main attribute of climatic changes is even not warming though it is recorded, but the fact that it is followed by the sharp growth of quantity of extreme weather events. Tornadoes in Kuzbass are regularly removed with mobile phones", – Kirpotin says.

Extreme instability of system is to what the world came and human have to learn to live in these conditions, the scientist considers. It is necessary to understand it and to change the relation to the problem. Not to be separated, but to combine efforts.

As opposed to Darwin theory "the strongest survives" Kirpotin suggests to teach people to cooperation, interaction, integration:

"The Russian scientist Pyotr Kropotkin, studying birdy spots in the Arctic, came to a conclusion: one of the most powerful driving forces in the nature is cooperation and mutual aid. And the modern biology continually confirms it. Many evolutionary changes result not from the competition, but as a result of symbiosis. I have the deep belief that there has to be the same in the scientific sphere and in any other".