White Sea Biological Station
Encyclopedia
Moscow State University
Lomonosov Moscow State University , previously known as Lomonosov University or MSU , is the largest university in Russia. Founded in 1755, it also claims to be one of the oldest university in Russia and to have the tallest educational building in the world. Its current rector is Viktor Sadovnichiy...
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Location
The station is situated on the Karelian coast of the White SeaWhite Sea
The White Sea is a southern inlet of the Barents Sea located on the northwest coast of Russia. It is surrounded by Karelia to the west, the Kola Peninsula to the north, and the Kanin Peninsula to the northeast. The whole of the White Sea is under Russian sovereignty and considered to be part of...
http://maps.google.com/maps?hl=en&t=h&ie=UTF8&ll=66.554889,33.105583&spn=0.024656,0.098362&z=13&om=1. WSBS is an isolated settlement. There is no road and communication with nearest village Poyakonda and the rest of the world is possible by boats in summer time and by snow-mobiles in winter.
WSBS is situated on the Cape Kindo peninsula on the shore of Velikaja Salma Bay. Cape Kindo is a piece of untouched northern taiga
Taiga
Taiga , also known as the boreal forest, is a biome characterized by coniferous forests.Taiga is the world's largest terrestrial biome. In North America it covers most of inland Canada and Alaska as well as parts of the extreme northern continental United States and is known as the Northwoods...
with the mosaic of coniferous and deciduous forests, wetlands and small lakes. Along the shore there are some grass meadows. The whole territory of Cape Kindo included to large local nature park "Polarny Krug". Hunting and forestry are the very limited in this area. This is the area of Karelian skerries
Skerry
A skerry is a small rocky island, usually defined to be too small for habitation. It may simply be a rocky reef. A skerry can also be called a low sea stack....
. Veliky Island, the largest island of the Kandalaksha
Kandalaksha
Kandalaksha is a town in Kandalakshsky District of Murmansk Oblast, Russia, located at the head of Kandalaksha Gulf on the White Sea, beyond the Arctic Circle. Population: 40,564 ; -History:The settlement has existed since the 11th century...
State Nature Reserve is on the opposite side of the 500 m strait.
Velikaja Salma Bay is characterized by an especially rich fauna and flora, which is in part a result of the strong tidal currents that form in the narrow straits. These currents prevent the formation of the ice and make it possible for research activities to be continued throughout the year
Climate
Relatively warm summer with temperature of air about 16 °C on average, temperature of surface water in summer sometime could be about 18–19 °C, but on the depths more than 25 m. It is always about zero. Winter is quite cold. The ice covers the White Sea from beginning of December to the first decade of May.History
The station was founded by a group of biologists from the university in 1938. One of the original members of this group, Nikolai Pertsov (1924–1987), devoted his whole life to building the station and became its director in 1951. The station took his name in 1995.Facilities
The station can provide guest scientists and students with basic scientific equipment, optical instruments and some other devices. The housing and laboratory facilities at the station can accommodate, simultaneously, up to 150 students and researchers in the summer period (from the end of May to the end of September). Few persons could be accommodated at the station in winter time. Guests are provided with rooms for 1, 2, 4 or 6 persons, and with bedding. Wood-burning stoves or electrical ovens provide heat. The station has a wooden bath-house. The dining-hall works for the summer months (June to September) only.During the summer the station is supplied by the stations own small vessels and in winter by vehicle overland. Supply trips are usually made twice a week and special orders can be placed with the Provisioning Department. The station staff can arrange special excursions and provide all necessary assistance with regard to the organization of fieldwork, sampling, etc. The library of the station holds 35,000 publications, including books, scientific publications and periodicals; some of this material is in English, German, French and other languages.
The station has a variety of boats and small vessels. Rowing boats are used for work close inshore. The station's Scuba diving
Scuba diving
Scuba diving is a form of underwater diving in which a diver uses a scuba set to breathe underwater....
service ensures that researchers are always able to collect fresh material without damaging the benthic communities. The wet lab with running seawater system is working during the Summer season from June to September.
Computer room
Computer room
A computer room can mean following:* Internet cafe, a public place where people can access Internet* Telecentre, a public place in developing countries where people can access Internet* Data center, a facility used to house computer systems...
, with wired and Wi-Fi
Wireless
Wireless telecommunications is the transfer of information between two or more points that are not physically connected. Distances can be short, such as a few meters for television remote control, or as far as thousands or even millions of kilometers for deep-space radio communications...
internet
Internet
The Internet is a global system of interconnected computer networks that use the standard Internet protocol suite to serve billions of users worldwide...
access is available. The territory of the Station and the vicinities is covered by MegaFon
MegaFon
MegaFon ,previously known as North-West GSM, is the second largest mobile phone operator in Russia. It works in the GSM and UMTS standard. Its main competitors are Bee Line GSM and Mobile TeleSystems ....
GSM mobile phone operator.
The botanical garden
The botanical gardenBotanical garden
A botanical garden The terms botanic and botanical, and garden or gardens are used more-or-less interchangeably, although the word botanic is generally reserved for the earlier, more traditional gardens. is a well-tended area displaying a wide range of plants labelled with their botanical names...
at the station was founded by Vladimir Vekhov and Kirill Voskresensky in 1963. The garden has about 200 plant species including local species, representatives of the tundra
Tundra
In physical geography, tundra is a biome where the tree growth is hindered by low temperatures and short growing seasons. The term tundra comes through Russian тундра from the Kildin Sami word tūndâr "uplands," "treeless mountain tract." There are three types of tundra: Arctic tundra, alpine...
and forest-tundra contiguous with the station territory, and also ornamental and introduced species
Introduced species
An introduced species — or neozoon, alien, exotic, non-indigenous, or non-native species, or simply an introduction, is a species living outside its indigenous or native distributional range, and has arrived in an ecosystem or plant community by human activity, either deliberate or accidental...
.
The biological station is used as a base for training students from Moscow State University in marine science. The station staff can arrange special excursions and provide all necessary assistance with regard to the organization of fieldwork, sampling, etc. The library of the station holds 35,000 publications, including books, scientific publications and periodicals; some of these materials are in English, German, French and other languages.
Educational programs
The biological station is used as a base for training students from Moscow State University in marine science, geographyGeography
Geography is the science that studies the lands, features, inhabitants, and phenomena of Earth. A literal translation would be "to describe or write about the Earth". The first person to use the word "geography" was Eratosthenes...
, geology
Geology
Geology is the science comprising the study of solid Earth, the rocks of which it is composed, and the processes by which it evolves. Geology gives insight into the history of the Earth, as it provides the primary evidence for plate tectonics, the evolutionary history of life, and past climates...
, etc. During the summer season more than 350 students of five faculties of Moscow State University join different field lab. courses at the Station. Most of them participate introduction courses in marine biology & biodiversity, but several courses are advanced educational programs, in different fields (invertebrate zoology
Invertebrate zoology
Invertebrate zoology is the biological discipline that consists of the study of invertebrate animals, i.e. animals without a backbone...
, ichthyology
Ichthyology
Ichthyology is the branch of zoology devoted to the study of fish. This includes skeletal fish , cartilaginous fish , and jawless fish...
, oceanography
Oceanography
Oceanography , also called oceanology or marine science, is the branch of Earth science that studies the ocean...
, hydrology
Hydrology
Hydrology is the study of the movement, distribution, and quality of water on Earth and other planets, including the hydrologic cycle, water resources and environmental watershed sustainability...
, hydrobiology
Hydrobiology
Hydrobiology is the science of life and life processes in water. Much of modern hydrobiology can be viewed as a sub-discipline of ecology but the sphere of hydrobiology includes taxonomy, economic biology, industrial biology, morphology, physiology etc. The one distinguishing aspect is that all...
, mycology
Mycology
Mycology is the branch of biology concerned with the study of fungi, including their genetic and biochemical properties, their taxonomy and their use to humans as a source for tinder, medicinals , food and entheogens, as well as their dangers, such as poisoning or...
, phycology
Phycology
Phycology is the scientific study of algae. Phycology is a branch of life science and often is regarded as a subdiscipline of botany....
and other Non-vascular plants, comparative physiology
Physiology
Physiology is the science of the function of living systems. This includes how organisms, organ systems, organs, cells, and bio-molecules carry out the chemical or physical functions that exist in a living system. The highest honor awarded in physiology is the Nobel Prize in Physiology or...
, comparative embryology
Embryology
Embryology is a science which is about the development of an embryo from the fertilization of the ovum to the fetus stage...
, comparative immunology
Immunology
Immunology is a broad branch of biomedical science that covers the study of all aspects of the immune system in all organisms. It deals with the physiological functioning of the immune system in states of both health and diseases; malfunctions of the immune system in immunological disorders ; the...
and ecoimmunology
Ecoimmunology
as called Ecological Immunology, Wild ImmunologyEcoimmunology is an interdisciplinary field combining aspects of immunology with ecology, biology, physiology, and evolution...
.)
Scientific projects
The scientific staff of the WSBS consists of 10 research scientists. They took part in a number of projects, working in co-operation with colleagues from different faculties of MSU, other institutes, and other countries. The main fields of research are as follows:- Diversity, structure and functioning of marine and coastal ecosystems (mapping of bottom communities, composition, distribution and biology of marine invertebrates, both macro- and meiobenthic, pelago-benthic coupling).
- Sustainable coastal development at the local level, rational exploitation of coastal resources;
- Comparative morphology and phylogeny of animals,
- Marine fungi,
- Marine microbiology.
The Station's facilities are also used by visiting researchers.