How Siberia can save the world from environmental disaster

2024 Author: Seth Attwood | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 15:55

For the past twenty years, the director of the North-Eastern Scientific Station, ecologist Sergei Zimov, with a team of enthusiasts have been sounding the alarm about the potential threats to humanity lurking in the permafrost.

Having moved to Yakutia back in the 80s, Zimov created a research center for permafrost - a unique Pleistocene park. To stop the warming, according to Zimov, the restoration of the ecosystem that existed here thousands of years ago will help. Strelka Mag told how it can be done.

While activists of the environmental movement Extinction Rebellion demand immediate action from the authorities due to the exacerbation of the environmental crisis, and schoolchildren from all over the world, inspired by the ideas of 16-year-old Greta Thunberg, nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize, go to green demonstrations, Sergei Zimov's team seems almost inconspicuous.

In the meantime, they are conducting an experiment, developing the Pleistocene Park in Yakutia. To get to the airport closest to the park, you need to fly from Yakutsk for about four more hours. Zimov moved there with his family in the late 1980s. Most of the organizational issues related to the operation of the park are now being solved by the son of 63-year-old Zimov, Nikita.

Together they try to populate a small pasture with large mammals that survived the Ice Age. This will help return the land to the state in which they were ten thousand years ago, even before the last glaciation. So the pastures could have a cooling effect on the climate and save the planet from the massive methane emissions hidden in the permafrost.

SLOW ACTION BOMB UNDER THE TUNDRA

Located in the northeast of Yakutia, thirty kilometers south of the village of Chersky, is a testing ground for a futuristic large-scale geoengineering project. There Sergey Zimov is trying to reverse the transformation of the ecosystem that took place 10 thousand years ago.

Zimov, whose articles have been published more than once by the most authoritative international scientific publications, for example Science and Nature, is sure that a time bomb made of carbon is buried under the taiga. Only an increase in the number and artificial support of a high density of animals in Siberia will help to protect humanity from its activation. This will lead to changes in vegetation and the establishment of grass communities, and ultimately help to recreate the ecosystem of mammoth tundra steppe, reminiscent of the modern savannah of equatorial Africa.

It is known that during the last glaciation, landscapes similar to the African savannas existed over large areas of the Northern Hemisphere. These steps to transform the Siberian Arctic ecosystems, according to Zimin, are necessary in order to prevent a large-scale release of methane into the atmosphere. It is formed as a result of the thawing of permafrost.

WHAT IS DANGEROUS FROM THE FROZEN

Climate is one of the most important expenditures of the world's leading economies, on which hundreds of trillions of dollars are spent. The Paris Protocol prescribes a reduction in carbon emissions by at least a quarter, but studies by Siberian scientists prove that industrial gas emissions are not the biggest problem, and new cataclysms are threatening the planet. The main danger, apparently, will be the permafrost, which threatens to be far from eternal.

Permafrost and especially its special type - yedoma, a viscous mixture of earth and ice, reminiscent of a swamp in structure - is one of the largest reservoirs of organic carbon in the world. The most organic permafrost is located in the Kolymo-Indigirskaya lowland, but even in this region, the temperature rises with climate warming, and even now, in a number of regions in the Arctic, local soil melting is observed. When permafrost thaws, microbes quickly transform thawed organic matter into greenhouse gases.

“In my eyes, over the past 20 years, new lakes have appeared in many places of the former permafrost. It is warming faster in the Arctic than in the Moscow region, says Zimov. - In many places, the permafrost does not freeze over the entire winter, and in many places there are thawed zones. And this is in the very north of the coldest region of the country! The emission of gases during thawing of permafrost will be greater than from all factories, up to a quarter of these gases will be methane, and the effect on climate will be five times stronger than from the entire global industry”.

HOW ANIMALS CAN LOWER ECOSYSTEM TEMPERATURE

At the moment, the permafrost temperature is about five degrees higher than the average annual air temperature. This difference is associated with the formation of a thick snow cover in winter, which covers the soil and prevents deep freezing. However, in pasture ecosystems, animals trample snow in winter in search of food. At the same time, the snow loses its heat-insulating properties, and the soil freezes much more strongly in winter. Thus, the permafrost is protected from thawing.

The Yakut horses, reindeer, moose, sheep, musk oxen, yaks, bison, wolverines and marals settled in the Pleistocene Park, according to Zimov, “do not just eat, but also constantly cool the permafrost, this is their professional hobby.” Thus, animals can lower the temperature by four degrees, extending the life of the ecosystem by at least 100 years.

It is difficult to imagine, but the mammoth prairies of Siberia in the Pleistocene epoch literally swarmed with animals. Dozens of species of animals grazed on pastures with tall juicy grasses. In a relatively small area, one mammoth, five bison, six horses, ten deer and half a lion coexisted at the same time. In 2006, the Government of the Sakha Republic and Alrosa assisted in transporting thirty young forest bison donated by the Government of Canada to the Pleistocene Park, but to another park, Lena Pillars. Recently, Zimov managed to settle yaks throughout the reserve, which was an event that had not been in the Arctic for at least 14 thousand years. With the help of crowdfunding platforms, by the spring of 2018, they raised about 118 thousand dollars to deliver bison from Alaska to Yakutia.

To create a balanced self-regulating biocenosis in the Pleistocene Park, Zimov plans to breed Amur tigers there, in addition to the existing wolves and bears. This is necessary because in the absence of their natural enemies, tigers and lions, overbred wolves become a threat to ungulates. Zimov's team is also considering the possibility of breeding African lions in the park, which, contrary to popular belief, are not afraid of the cold and can replace the destroyed animals of the Ice Age.

Zimov is also seriously considering the possibility of cloning mammoths. Since the entire carcasses of giant ice age animals have been preserved in the permafrost, it will presumably be possible in the future to restore recently extinct species whose remains contain genetic material. For example, now lost woolly rhinoceroses and mammoths, which in the extreme north-east of Siberia alone numbered from 40 to 60 thousand heads. Zimin is supported by one of the main ideologues of the return of mammoths - a scientist from Harvard George Church. But for now, the scientist sees his mission in preparing the ecosystem for their settlement and drawing attention to the potential environmental threat of both the Russian authorities and the international community, who are not ready to accept the fact that Russia is capable of influencing the global climate.