Achievements of the Russian Academy of Sciences in Studies of Lakes over Three Centuries (A Review)

Abstract

This study is dedicated to the 300th anniversary of the Russian Academy of Sciences and the 80th anniversary of the establishment of the Institute of Limnology, Russian Academy of Sciences. The main results of studying Russian lakes in the Academy of Sciences over three centuries are presented. In the 18th century, the Academy of Sciences organized first “physical” expeditions for studying lakes, lake regions, as well as the Aral and Caspian seas. In 1916, a Commission for Studying Lake Baikal was set up at the Imperial St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences. After 1917, the studies of lakes expanded considerably because of the practical needs of the country’s development. In 1928, the Presidium of the Academy of Sciences transformed the Baikal expedition into the Baikal Limnological Station. In 1944, the Laboratory of Limnology was created in Leningrad, and in 1971, the Institute of Limnology, of the USSR Academy of Sciences was created. In the 1970s–1980s, comprehensive studies of lakes and lake–river systems were carried out in the European part of the USSR along the design line of the redistribution of the water resources in the country. In 1970–1980, USSR Academy of Sciences participated in solving global problems of limnology—eutrophication, acidification, and pollution of lakes. In the late XX–early XXI centuries, special attention was paid to the assessment of the state and the development of forecasts of changes in the ecosystems of water bodies under various climatic and anthropogenic impacts. Monographs were published, generalizing the history of lakes studies in various parts of the country, and complex atlases of large lakes in Russia were compiled. The discovery of periglacial Lake Vostok in the Antarctic, and the obtained scientific results are outstanding scientific achievements in the late XX century. It is shown that lake studies by the Russian Academy of Sciences have contributed much to the basic science and to solving practical problems of the country’s economy, and are significant for the development of problems of continental hydrology.