Silver Taiga Ecologists Study the Impact of Loggings on the Rivers
The Foundation ecologists Alexander Borovlyov and Nikolay Shilov together with the driver Sergey Davydov have come back from the field trip to the headwaters of the Vychegda River, where they collected samples of benthos and plankton on the Cher Vychegodskaya and the Lopju tributaries within the framework of the project on the assessment of loggings’ impact on water streams.
The project “Assessment of a long-term impact of loggings on water resources” has been implemented by the Silver Taiga Foundation since 2014. Notably, the project objective is very challenging – not just to study the current situation, but to evaluate the long-term consequences of this impact. To fulfill this task different methods are used on different levels. One of the levels is medium-size rivers with watersheds logged at different times and in a different degree. In this case, the Foundation specialists use bioindication methods: they study how loggings influence the biological resources of these water streams.
The expedition to the headstreams of the Vychegda is one in the series of expeditions that are arranged with the purpose of ecological assessment of the impact of loggings on water and biological resources of pilot rivers, including physical and chemical indicators of the surface waters of these water streams. One of the reasons why the Cher Vychegodskaya and the Lopju were selected as subjects for research is because their watersheds have different histories of forest management: on the Cher Vychegodskaya and its tributary Yagcher loggings are still ongoing and on the Lopju there are old loggings. Besides, monitoring of this kind was already conducted on the Lopju in the past and now it is possible to compare and see how the ecosystem changed.
During this expedition, 22 samples were taken in different points – in the headstreams of these tributaries and their midstream. Unfortunately, the ecologists could not work in the mouths of the rivers: the roads were washed out by long-lasting rains and it was very difficult to move from one point to another.
The samples of benthos and plankton taken during the expedition will be analyzed by the specialists of the Laboratory of Ichthyology and Hydrology of the Department of Animal Ecology, Institute of Biology of the Komi Scientific Center of Ural Branch of RAS (Head of the laboratory – M.A. Baturina) – one of the Silver Taiga partners in the implementation of this project.
It is clear that the rivers’ hydrological regime is affected by many factors, including climate changes, weather anomalies, construction of bridges and other hydraulic engineering structures, as well as other types of human intervention in the natural processes. It is very difficult to single out which consequences in particular were caused by loggings. However, it can be done if objective evidences gathered during a maximum possible period will be taken as reference and a complex of all existing for today research approaches and methods will be used.
