Research Station Samoylov Island

In response to the Russian war of aggression against Ukraine, the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) announced a fundamental change to its cooperation policy with Russia and Belarus in coordination with the Federal Foreign Office and the Federal Chancellery on 25 February 2020. For this reason, all current and planned projects and collaborations of the Alfred Wegener Institute with government agencies in Russia have been frozen since 2022. If you have any queries, please contact taskforce.ukraine@awi.de

The Russian research station ‘Samoylov Island’ is located in the Lena Delta in north-east Siberia (Russian Arctic). The delta stretches over 150 kilometers into the Laptev Sea and is one of Russia's largest nature reserves. This unique region is crucial for understanding the processes that influence permafrost in the Siberian Arctic. The station, operated by the Trofimuk Institute of Oil and Gas Geology and Geophysics, Siberian Department, Russian Academy of Sciences, was used until 2021 as a base for the Russian-German LENA research expeditions, which took place annually from spring to autumn. The LENA expeditions were jointly organized by three institutes: the Alfred Wegener Institute Helmholtz Centre for Polar and Marine Research, the Arctic and Antarctic Research Institute in St. Petersburg and the Melnikov Permafrost Institute, Siberian Department, Russian Academy of Sciences in Yakutsk.

The aim of the fieldwork during the expeditions was to investigate the development of regional geology, climate and biology during the Quaternary period, with a special focus on the interaction of permafrost landscapes with recent climate warming and its consequences. Numerous long-term measuring stations for monitoring permafrost conditions, micrometeorology, the exchange of trace gases and numerous biological parameters were installed on the island and have provided important data for the international research community since 1998. Joint expeditions and data collection as well as data exchange have not taken place since 2022 due to the end of the collaboration.

Data Access:

The links provided here for INTERACT Virtual Access lead to the Samoylov datasets in the PANGAEA database and the Data Management System of the Global Terrestrial Network for Permafrost (GTN-P). Data sets since 2002 are freely accessible in the PANGAEA information system, which is operated as an open access library with the intention of archiving and publishing georeferenced data of the Earth system and making it available to the international scientific community and the public. Over 230 data sets can be selected according to their author, year of publication, title (research discipline), method and location. The link to the GNT-P database provides temperature data from boreholes in permafrost soils at various depths since 2006. Data for the seasonal thaw depth (active layer) have been provided in GTN-P since 2002. More recent data from the Samoylov Observatory are no longer accessible due to the discontinued cooperation since 2022.