Chashnikovo

Measurements test area

Secondary moraine plain with coniferous-deciduous forests on sod-podzolic soils. Vegetation comprises forests, meadows, swamps and arable land. This enables simultaneous development of low-carbon land use strategies, reforestation and agronomic technologies aimed at long-term deposition of atmospheric carbon in forest, floodplain and agricultural landscapes.

Tasks

1. Set up a technological system for the year-round monitoring of gas exchanges across the soil-vegetation- atmosphere boundaries
2. Fine-tune the methodology for the quantitative assessment of the carbon budget of natural and anthropogenically transformed landscapes to identify the potential for carbon sequestration
3. Develop coupled dynamic models of changes in carbon stocks under various scenarios of environmental management and GIS interpolate them on the basis of remote sensing of the surface

Expected research results

A work plan has been developed with a quantitative assessment of the required datasets from in-situ and remote observations, including meteorological observations, measurements of greenhouse gas fluxes and carbon balance components, and remote sensing

Carbon measurement supersite maps are selected for the geoinformation system (GIS based on MapInfo Pro)

Education and training

Expected number of young scientists, students, postgraduates — 5

New education programs and courses

Master’s and Bachelor’s degree program in «Sustainable management of natural resources for food security» (in English)

Special courses for Master’s students within the framework of existing programs:

1. «Biogeochemical cycles and global climate change»
2. «Low-carbon environmental management”

International integration

Open competition of EJP-SOIL projects on the organic carbon cycle in agricultural soils — 2 joint applications have been submitted in cooperation with researchers from INRAE (France), the University of Palermo (Italy), St.Istvan University (Hungary), COLPOS (Mexico), INTA (Argentina) and Makerere University (Uganda) and Georg August University (Göttingen, Germany)

Planned outputs

Proposals for the implementation of optimal low-carbon environmental management strategies that facilitate maximal long-term carbon deposition

Quantitative characteristics of the carbon balance of forest ecosystems (mixed deciduous forest) and crops of perennial grasses. Quantitative estimates of seasonal and daily variability of carbon dioxide and methane fluxes in forest ecosystems

Quantitative estimates of differences in greenhouse gas fluxes in agrocenoses with different farming technologies. Process-oriented one-dimensional and three-dimensional models for greenhouse gas fluxes in forest ecosystems and agrocenoses

Software for calculating the sequestration potential of atmospheric carbon in the Central Federal District with an economic assessment of the introduction of alternative land use scenarios and elements of farming systems