Global Ring Network for Advanced Applications Development

Environments Sciences Projects . Novosibirsk. Siberian Branch of Russian Academy of Science

List of Projects

ATMOS Project

Web portal on atmospheric environment ATMOS (http://atmos.iao.ru and http://atmos.scert.ru) is developed by international consortium on the base of INTAS grant 00189 as a be-lingual information resource in area of atmospheric physics and chemistry and in related domain air quality assessment and management. It opens an access to integrated thematic information, environmental data, models and results of particular situations studies as well as to relevant information and educational resources for professional community, students and general public. The portal has all typical component and services like collections of links, user group registration, discussion forum, etc. Also it has specific scientific services and instruments, which are on-line access to models and algorithms, thematic data collections and extensive educational resources of different level.

The portal is designed as a set of interrelated scientific sites, devoted to areas of Atmospheric Sciences (chemistry, spectroscopy, radiation, aerosols, solar-terrestrial interrelations, climatic models, etc.) and sites describing domain of air quality assessment and management and providing environmental information on two Siberia regions, which are Lake Baikal and West Siberia Lowland.

Each scientific site is an information-computational system designed in Internet technologies. It allow user to get thematic information as well as to perform relevant computations in his own or neighboring area of expertise on the base of structured data collections on Siberian environment included into the portal sites. Namely this makes the portal quite an appropriate instrument for performance of investigations within i nterdisciplinary research projects devoted to environmental studies in Siberia.

Interdisciplinary Integration Project «Siberian Biosphere-Geosphere Programme: Integrated Regional Research of Modern Natural Climatic Changes»

(http://scert.ru/en/projects/current/sgbp/ )

For many years the Siberian region has been a theme and a testing area for fundamental and applied research for many RAS institutions and primary for its Siberian branch and also for regional and central institutes of higher education and other establishments of this profile. In previous years new approaches were developed and extensive material was collected here including the results of observations of physical, chemical and biological characteristics of main subsystems of the regional climatic system. Based on the results of basic research carried out in SB RAS the proposed Program is, as a matter of fact, a Siberian block of formed by IGBP international project on integration research of all aspects of natural-climatic changes in Northern Siberia.

Nowadays the existence of anthropogenic modulation of climatic signal both on the global and regional scale is accepted by the scientific community. At that the registered regional natural-climatic changes of natural and anthropogenic origin cause new regimes of environmental subsystems functioning, which leads in its turn to the appearance of additional factors of influence on the global climatic system. Changing regimes of geosphere-biosphere subsystems interaction (lithosphere, atmosphere, hydrosphere and biosphere) also cause the changes of human activity conditions. Thus, not only the influence of global processes on regional climate changes, but also the influence of regional changes on global ones determines the necessity of interdisciplinary research of simultaneous physical, chemical and biological processes. Difficulty of this research demanding the intake of specialists from different scientific disciplines can not be overcome without usage of modern mathematical modeling tool and developed information technologies. International Programme IGBP, coordinating geosphere-biosphere research, marked out several world regions which impact considerably to the value of the observed modulation and are more sensible to the forecasting natural-climatic changes. Northern Eurasia is one of the marked regions and Siberia plays a considerable role both in stabilization and destabilization of the system. The simple approving of this fact is the possible change of greenhouse gases balance in the result of the permafrost border shift. Wide-area environmental pollution also demands the fundamental research of chemical elements migration, and of interaction of organic elements with water, gases and mineral components.

Main objectives of the project:

1. To create the system of multicomponent monitoring of Siberian mesoscale natural-territorial complexes on the biological, chemical, physical and technogenic components of the regional geosphere-biosphere system, and to create the informational basis for structuring, storage and free access to the cumulative and incoming data on observations and measurements.

2. To prepare the guidance and calculation basis for multifactor modeling of basic processes of regional natural-territorial complexes development, taking into account the interaction between main components on the basis of climatic model system, and to develop a guidance basis for forecasting of geosphere-biosphere changes in Siberia in the context of the sustainable development of the region.

3. To investigate interferences of global and regional (Western Siberia, in the first place) climate characteristic changes caused by natural and anthropogenic factors.

4. To prepare a scientific technological basis and a national scientific body for inclusion of the Programme into large international projects, supported by IGBP.

Participants List

1. Institute of Monitoring of Climatic and Ecological Systems SB RAS (former Institute for Optical Monitoring SB RAS)
2. Institute of Water and Ecological Problems SB RAS
3. Institute of Petroleum Chemistry SB RAS
4. Institute of Soil Science and Agricultural Chemistry SB RAS
5. Institute of Forest SB RAS and its Tomsk Filial
6. Tomsk Filial of the Institute of Petroleum and Gas Geology SB RAS
7. Institute of Computational Mathematics and Mathematical Geophysics SB RAS
8. Institute of Computational Modeling SB RAS
9. Institute of Computational Tecnologies SB RAS
10. Institute of Geography SB RAS
11. Institute of Solar-Terrestrial Physics SB RAS
12. Institute of Catalysis SB RAS
13. Institute of Chemical Kinetics and Combustion SB RAS
14. Siberian Center for Environmental Research and Training
15. Institute of Numerical Mathematics RAS
16. Altai State University
17. Tomsk State University
18. Tomsk Polytechnic University
19. Tomsk State University of Control Systems and Radioelectronics
20. Yugorsk State University
21. Ugra Research Institute of Information Technologies

SBRAS distributed database on Siberian environment

Recently initiated Project aimed at development of the Database on environmental characteristics observed/measured by key actors belonging SB RAS. Among those are Institute of Monitoring od Climatic and Ecological Systems, Institute of Forest, Institute of Geography, Institute of Water and Environment Problems and Institute of Criolitosphere.

Organization

Siberian Center for Environment Research and Training (SCERT http://scert.ru/en/ ) is recently organized multidisciplinary research center comprising efforts of several research Institutes of Siberian Branch RAS and Universities from Tomsk, Barnaul, Irkutsk, Krasnoyarsk, Novosibirsk and Moscow in area of regional climate change monitoring and modeling, regional climate impact applications. The Center is located at Tomsk Akademgorodok. The Center is organized on the base of initiative of the Institute of Monitoring of Climatic and Ecological Systems SB RAS (former Institute for Optical Monitoring SB RAS) and according decision of the Siberian Branch RAS operates now as SB RAS international research center. Recently SCERT has been officially included into group of International Research Centers of SB RAS.

Leaders from Russian side

Prof. Evgueni Gordov (gordov@scert.ru),
RAS Corresponding Member Anatoly Fedotov (fedotov@sbras.ru),
Dr. Alexander Fazliev (faz@iao.ru)

List of benefiting US scientists and science programs

• Dr. D. Deering (Donald.Deering@nasa.gov), Dr. G. Gutman, Dr. O. Krankina(olga.krankina@oregonstate.edu): NASA – RAS Northern Eurasia Environment Study Partnership Initiative (NEESPI, http://neespi.gsfc.nasa.gov/ ), for relevant database Program see http://wwwdata.forestry.oregonstate.edu/MDEDIT/teamform.aspxa ;

• Dr. Marlino (marlino@ucar.edu): NCAR Program The Digital Library for Earth System; Education (DLESE,http://www.dlese.org/dds/index.jsp )

• Dr. A. Ushakov (aushako@alexandria.ucsb.edu ): Alexandria Digital Library (http://www.alexandria.ucsb.edu/ );

• Dr. L. Rothman (LRothman@CfA.Harvard.edu ): The HITRAN Database (http://cfa-www.harvard.edu/HITRAN/ ): HITRAN is an acronym for high-resolution transmission molecular absorption database. HITRAN is a compilation of spectroscopic parameters which a variety of computer codes use to predict and simulate the transmission and emission of light in the atmosphere.

Project description

The project is devoted to establishment of a high performance network linking scientists from the US and Russia. The VN Sukachev Institute of Forest SB RAS has broad cooperation with American partners in a frame of several international project founded by NSF, NASA, RFFR, CRDF and SB RAS.

By integrating advances in ecological knowledge, biological instrumentation, applied informatics, creating of data bases and computing, the authors of this proposal will create a computational modeling tool for tree growth research and tree growth-climate relations. These efforts require a multidisciplinary, multi-institutional team, which will integrate existing and developing data bases with mathematical models of tree growth, and software architectures to produce a powerful software platform for research and educational outreach to study tree growth response on current and projected climatic change with highest time resolution and in different spatial and temporal scales (from local to global).

The Project research will be done as combination of different approaches, elaborated in modern science: bioinformatics, ecological modeling, computer and system science, GIS technology and climate modeling. We propose to create a scalable version of general computer software adequately applied in forest ecology and modeling. Particularly, we propose a multi-disciplinary and multi-institutional team which will be capable to reach the quantitative and verified results in mathematical modeling of tree growth-climate relations, ecosystem modeling and bioinformatics.

The scientific objectives of the Project formulated as following:

1. to test the created non-linear climate-tree growth model on existing network of long-term tree-ring series over the world, collected in International Tree Ring Data Bank and Russian Regional Tree Ring Data Base in order to parameterized their ecological characteristics;

2. to map and analyze the spatial variability of main ecological parameters using GIS technology and existing information on topology, soil, main climatic variables etc.;

3. to analyze and map spatial variability in tree growth response on projected climatic scenarios in regional and global scales;

4. to create the original software and computer linking system for objectives 1-3, and fast exchange of information, and organization of hierarchical computer system for fast input the projected results to models of higher ecological level (stand, community, ecosystem and ecoregion levels).

During the Project implementation, American and Russian sides will get mutual benefits. American partners have a great experience in creating network, organization of data bases, analysis of tree growth-climate relationship on ecological and physiological bases, great advances in interpretation of tree growth as worldwide climatic indicators with highest time resolution, and in application of climate modeling to proposed ecological changes in regional to global scales. Russian team has good relations through last ten years with their American colleagues to bring the original simulation models, GIS-technology experience and software elaboration as well as for local and regional scales. Both sides are actively working in a way to create the common approaches for tree growth-climate analysis, and to teach students and PhD-students for basics of ecological modeling and dendroclimatology. Both sides have a friendly experience in exchange the results, software and data bases in a frame of finished and ongoing joint research projects.

The expected outcomes of the proposed study will be:

1. improved and verified spatio-temporal computer model which adequately simulate the recent and projected tree growth variability in relation to recent and projected climatic changes on local, regional, and global scales;

2. the improved software for elaborating hierarchical computer system including GIS-technology which allows one to combine the spatial information of regional heterogeneity in climate and forest ecology with other available data on tree growth variation in different scales (like remote sensing data, carbon flux data etc.);

3. improved software for organization of international data bases focused on climate change and forest response.

Broader Impact: the goal of the outreach plan is to create, evaluate, and implement a new set of computer techniques for high school and university teachers in several fields of interests: global ecology, climatic change, forest science, ecosystem modeling.

List of Benefiting Scientists from the Russian side

1. Eugene A Vaganov, Leader of the Projects, Professor, member of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Director of the Sukachev Institute of Forest (SIF) of SB RAS

2. Shashkin A.V., Ph.D., Department of Dendroclimatology of SIF

3. Korets M.A., Ph.D., Department of Forest Monitoring of SIF

4. Shishov V.V., Ph.D., Department of Dendroclimatology of SIF

5. Dvinskaya M.A., Ph.D.-student, Department of Forest Biophysics of SIF

6. Rubtsov A., Ph.D.-student, Department of Dendroclimatology of SIF

7. Shevyrnogov A.P., Prof., PhD, Department of Ecologycal Informatics

8. Chernetskiy M.Y., PhD-student, Department of Ecologycal Informatics

Science Programs that will get novel advantages with application of modern network connection

1. Grant Programs of the Russian Foundation for Basic Research (No. 03-04-63047, 03-04-63117, 03-04-63115, 03-04-63116, 03-04-07006, 03-04-06945, 03-04-96123, 03-04-06990, 03-04-06069, 03-04-48037, 03-04-96136, 03-04-06987, 03-05-65333, 03-05-06501, 02-05-65119)

2. Grant CRDF (RB1-2416-KY-02)

3. Grant INTAS (No. 01-0052),

4. Grant Programs of Siberian Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences (Integration Projects Nos.56, 121,145,138),

5. Grant by European Commission DG Research TCOS-Siberia (No. EVK2-CT-2001-00131)

6. Subcontract of the NASA USA (No.2207-03-023).

List of Benefiting from US

1. Department of Geography University of Nevada Mail Stop 154 Reno, NV 89557-0048 (USA)

2. Laboratory of Tree-Ring Research University of Arizona