The third International Conference of the Siberian Environmental Change Network (SecNet)

T V Callaghan¹, O M Shaduyko², S N Kirpotin³

¹Department of Animal and Plant Sciences, Sheffield University, UK

²Excellence Support Unit, Tomsk State University, Tomsk, Russia

³"Bio-Clim-Land" Center of Excellence, Tomsk State University, Tomsk, Russia

The third international conference of the Siberian Environmental Change Network (SecNet) was held at Salekhard on September 26st to September 30th 2018 in collaboration with the International Network for Terrestrial Research and Monitoring in the Arctic (INTERACT). It was the third in an international series focusing on environmental issues and sustainability of the North. Previous meetings focused on networking research institutions within Siberia and launching SecNet, and improving dialogue among researchers, local people and decision makers. The societal consequences of changes in the Siberian environment and its resources are likely to have implications for the global community as well as for local residents because, for example, because of the significant land-surface – atmosphere interactions that occur there. The third conference therefore focused on international networking in environmental research and monitoring over large geographical areas but with an emphasis on the relevance of results to Siberia, and the contributions science in Siberia could make to global activities.

Despite numerous research activities and published syntheses by Russian and Foreign scientists in Siberia (e.g. Groisman et al., 2017), research is still largely uncoordinated and information flow, particularly from Siberia to the West, is still limited. As, the societal consequences of changes in the Siberian environment and its resources are likely to have implications for the global community as well as for local residents (e.g. through permafrost thaw), it is essential to improve communications within Siberia and between Siberian institutions and peoples and the rest of the World. Such communication is essential so that Siberian and global communities can apply knowledge-based management to resource use, ecosystem services and environmental protection. Furthermore, most studies on environmental change are highly focused on climatology, ecosystem science and biophysics and lack a wider multidisciplinary coverage including for example archaeology and anthropology that help to understand human responses to environmental change such as migration.

SecNet's baseline in time is the historic past to future: without understanding past human interactions with the Siberian environment, we cannot understand the current state of the environment and this understanding is essential to project future environmental changes.

Materials will be useful to specialists who are engaged in fundamental and applied issues in the fields of Arctic studies, geomorphology, biogeochemistry, soil science, agriculture, security environment, rational nature management, social anthropology, as well as to regional authorities, decision makers, indigenous peoples and other stakeholders.

We express our thanks to the Government of the Yamal-Nenets Autonomous District, the Science and Innovation Network of the British Embassy, Moscow, in-kind support from INTERACT and Tomsk State University for giving the opportunity to share scientific ideas and up-to-date developments at the Conference, and the Russian Foundation for Basic Research (projects No 18-05-60264, 18-00-01493) for financial support.