Projects Forest Research Institute KarRC RAS

System research on social, environmental and economic processes at the White Sea and in its catchment (White Sea region) as part of Russia’s Arctic zone is carried out with the principal aim to assess the state of and changes in the economy and the White Sea ecosystem, and the opportunities for improving the conditions for the live of the human population.

Soil degradation is a relatively young science that has not yet covered the whole range of objects for observation, in particular, forest zone fallow lands involved in a process of postagrogenic restoration of vegetation and soil in active land management. Ambiguous estimations of carbon balance in Russia as well as huge changes in a land management system require the existing values of CO2 balance clarification especially in the European North soils and ecosystems where this issue has not been studied sufficiently enough. As a result there is a lack of research on various aspects of these lands activity in economy while sustainable agriculture ensuring. In this research a comprehensive study of chronoseries succession at post-agricultural lands is proposed by using a number of parameters that allow to evaluate carbon fluxes dynamics in biogeocenosis and that will give an idea of carbon fluxes in a succession series with subsequent economic efficiency calculation of the land management changes.
The research novelty lies in significant expansion of a scientific understanding of the current soil state in a post-anthropogenic ecosystem of the European North as well as factors determining carbon fluxes in succession series. The obtained data of complex studies allows improving economic assessment methods of land management based on interdisciplinary databases compilation and systematic approach implementation. The latter is based on a research complex which components are methods for estimating both rent’s size and structure taking into account transformational and transaction costs, discounted capital flow dynamics which is a function of not only costs, but also a barrier to (discount) rate. Developed institutional model is a basis for a new approach to both defining and implementing measures affecting land management in a context of sustainable soil management, its long-term productivity ensuring their functions sustainability.