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APN/START Global Change Research Awareness Raising Symposium in Northeast Asia |
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APN/START Global Change Research Awareness Raising Symposium in Northeast Asia Vladivostok, Russia, October 7-8, 2002
The APN/START Global Change Research Awareness Raising Symposium in Northeast Asia addressed the need to recognize key problems in local/regional global change studies, focus areas under the impact of climate change and sea-level rise, and to bring together relevant Russian researchers and policy-makers as well as scientists from surrounding countries and international organizations in order to summarize and develop our present knowledges and ideas on coastal northeast Asia changes, to present summaries on the climatic and environmental assessments, to discuss ways of sustainable development and adaptation strategies and to develop a coastal zone research proposal to APN. The initiative helped to increase the awareness among scientific and policy communities of the need of more close scientific collaboration between northeast Asian countries. The Symposium was held as a part of APN networking and capacity building programme. The APN/START Symposium continued a series of successful workshops organized by the Far East Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences National Committee (FEB RAS NC) for International Geosphere-Biosphere Programme (IGBP) (Chairman - Prof. Vladimir L. Kasyanov, Secretary - Dr. Konstantin A. Lutaenko) and Institute of Marine Biology (IMB) FEB RAS in Vladivostok since 1996 [Global Change Studies..., 1996; 1997; 1999; 2000]. Two workshops held were international (in 1997, in conjunction with TEACOM meeting; and in 1999) and their proceedings with most important papers presented were published in English as TEACOM Publications under the sponsorship of the IMB [Reports of the 7-th TEACOM Meeting..., 1998; Reports of the International Workshop..., 2001; 2002]. Three main themes were discussed during above-mentioned workshops: land-ocean interactions in the coastal zone, global ocean ecosystem dynamics, and past global changes, particularly those in coastal zone. The activities conducted in 1996-2001 revealed that Russian Far Eastern research community is highly competent but little involved in international projects and programs. Language barrier and cultural and political differences for a long time prevented contacts between Russian, Chinese, Korean and Japanese scholars in global change. Thus, development of regional collaboration and international scientific networks are in need to be improved as well as new links between national research teams and policy-making community in the Russian Far East should be established. As the duration of the Symposium was limited by two days, Workshop on the Global Change Studies in the Far East with oral presentations of the Russian scientists was held earlier (October 2-3) as a separate meeting and was organized by the same Organizing Committee [Abstracts of the International Workshop..., 2002]; all the participants were invited to form a poster session at the APN/START Symposium. This broadened the thematic issues to be discussed during the Symposium and made it possible to document all the variety of research carried on by Russian Far Eastern science community. Another pre-Symposium activities were related to 10th TEACOM meeting held on October 6.
The Symposium was held in October 7-8, 2002, in Vladivostok, Russia, with a day and a half of presentations (including poster session), and a half of a day of working groups discussions. The presentation sessions included following topics:
Major topics at the Symposium included regional climate model inter-comparison in Asia, climate change in northwest Pacific in 20th century, recent environmental and coastal modifications, Tumen River area ecological assessment, Quaternary paleoenvironmental and climatic history in the Korean Peninsula, northwestern Pacific islands, Okhotsk and Bering Seas. Abstracts of all oral presentations are provided in the Appendix section as well as titles of the posters. In total, 17 papers were delivered by invited key speakers, and more than 30 poster presentations were prepared. The Symposium was held in conjunction with 10th TEACOM meeting (October 6) which was attended by START Deputy Director (Dr. H. Virji), TEACOM members, and relevant scientists - guest from China, Russia, Republic of Korea and Japan. In the TEACOM meeting, progress reports of ongoing TEA regional projects were presented, and afternoon session focused on the LOICZ East Asia Basins Project, and the development of a coastal zone research proposal. The discussions on possible proposal to APN were continued during the meeting of two working groups on the second day of the Symposium, one for the PAGES initiative, and second - for coastal zone (see below). Unfortunately, PAGES working group failed to identify pinpoints for possible proposal as the past global changes researches are out of APN priorities; however, the second group successfully developed a LOICZ-oriented proposal. Far East Branch of the RAS NC for IGBP disseminated among the participants recent Russian publication on global change studies (TEACOM Publications nos. 4, 6, 7 and some other).
The present status of the Russian national research activity and projects on global change issues was well documented. It was identified that major progress was made in PAGES- and LOICZ-related researches, and possible mutual cooperation with surrounding countries (China, Korea and Japan) was discussed. A proposal to APN, Climate Variability and Human Activity in Relation to Northeast Asian Land-Ocean Interactions and their Implications for Coastal Zone Management, was developed with participation of Korean, Chinese and Russian researchers through working group discussions. The proposal intends to investigate current environmental effects on river-ocean system, as results of natural changes and rapid socio-economic development at the area of the selected rivers in the region of the East Asia. It is very important to study the changes in biogeochemical fluxes in the rivers and coastal zones because biogeochemical operation factors determine the vital capacity of ecosystems. River runoff exerts particular effect on biogeochemical operation factors in the coastal zone, therefore it is important to know, which changes occur in the "land-ocean" system, and how human activities would affect the latter. The key questions in the project to be addressed are:
Three volumes of the proceedings of the Symposium are planned to be published in 2004 under the tentative titles: Vol. 1 - Long-term Ecosystem Dynamics and Global Changes in the Coastal Zone; Vol. 2 - Past Global Changes in Northeast Asia; Vol. 3 - Climate Variability and Changes in Northwest Pacific and East Asia. Vol. 1 will be published as a Special Issue of the Russian Journal of Marine Biology (in both Russian and English), and the rest as TEACOM Publications.
APN/START Global Change Research Awareness Raising Symposium in Northeast Asia was a remarkable step toward APN's networking and capacity building activities in East Asia and the first meeting of such kind in Russia. The present status of the Russian national research activity on global change issues was well documented and the need for mutual international cooperation was emphasized. One of the significant outcomes of the APN/START Symposium was development of the proposal to APN which main objective is evaluation of the impact of the Amur and Tumen Rivers on coastal zones in comparison with the effects of other major rivers of the region running in Russia, Korea and China. Project will involve many scientists (including young) into international activities. The Symposium summarized and developed present knowledges and ideas on coastal northeast Asia changes, discussed ways of sustainable development and adaptation strategies and its participants developed a coastal zone research proposal to APN. This activity should be regarded as a successful and would be continued in future by a series of regional workshops and research initiatives.
A workshop on land-ocean interactions in the coastal zone of northeast Asia and a training course for young scientists would be conducted as a part of the above-mentioned project submitted to APN. A workshop on future cooperation of the Russian national research teams with Asian global change research community is suggested to be held in one of the Asian countries in order to reach more involvement of the Russian scientists into APN capacity building activity. Another future direction of the research is targeted at past global/environmental changes during last 100-500 years, i.e., on the scale of hundred of years; in this case, rich experience of the Russian research teams in the field of the Pleistocene-Holocene studies in the Far East and Asian facilities and experience can be integrated.
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