West-Siberian meridional carbon transect: the concept

Last year, in Russia there was started a new government long-term initiative, that aims reduction for Russian greenhouse gas emissions by up to 70 percent compared to the 1990 level in less than next 10 years (by 2030).

On the one hand such ambitious goal to includes massive technical and industrial modernization and other hand – supposed to provide valid, verified and globally recognized scientific data on the runoff and emission of greenhouse gases from ecosystems all around Russia. Thus, a large-scale program for the development of carbon stations has started with running of carbon polygons, which should combine both research-methodological and educational functions, and, eventually, contribute to the achievement of the specified state objective. The educational function of the polygons includes training personnel with interdisciplinary competencies to work on "carbon" topics, including the highest qualifications.

Starting to design and equip the first running polygon in the Tyumen region (by University of Tyumen), we initially stated concept of creating an ecological and climatic transect across the whole of Russia from north to south. The general idea is connect the new carbon polygon near Tyumen with carbon monitor infrastructure in proposed polygons and stations in Tobolsk and Ishim, Khanty-Mansiysk (Mukhrino) and Yamalo-Nenets (Labytnangi)Autonomous Disctricts. With potential sites in partners, that University of Tyumen has in Central Asian republics, there are prospect to continue this meridional transect further to the south. And in this case, we have the prospect of getting a global-scale monitoring system in the center of Eurasia across all natural zones from north to south, that provide massive raw data set for global observation system.