In contrast to the well-studied West Siberian sector of frozen bogs in the Russian Arctic, the frozen mound bogs (so-called “palsas”) on the highlands of Southern Siberia have not yet been studied, but they are suspected to be even more sensitive to ongoing climate change. This article provides the pilot study on palsa mire Kara-Sug in the highland areas of Western Sayan mountain system, Tuva Republic. The study focuses on the current state of palsa mire and surrounding landscapes, providing wide range of ecological characteristics while describing ongoing transformations of natural landscapes under a changing climate. The study used a variety of field and laboratory methods: the integrated landscape-ecological approach, the study of peat deposits, geobotanical analysis, and modern analysis of the chemical composition of water, peat, and soils. The study shows that highland palsa mires are distinguished by their compactness and high variety of cryogenic landforms leading to high floristic and ecosystem diversity compared with lowland palsa mires. This information brings new insights and contributes to a better understanding of extrazonal highland palsa mires, which remain a “white spot” in the global environmental sciences.

This study investigated the heavy metal concentrations in bog and stream water compared to present-day atmospheric deposition, and concentrations in peat and vegetation within three typical raised bogs in Western Siberia located in urban area, close to oil and gas facilities and in the natural background area. Our data showed that elevated heavy metals deposition occurs not only near industrial centres but also in remote areas, which is a sign of regional atmospheric deposition of heavy metals associated with long-range transport and wildfires. Present-day atmospheric depositions of heavy metals are not always consistent with their contents in waters, and the content of Zn, Pb, Cu and Cd in waters is more correlated with their concentrations in vegetation and in the upper peat layer; this indicates a significant role of biological processes in heavy metal cycling. Temperature plays an important role in increasing the mobility and vegetation uptake of heavy metals. Heavy metals removal is largely determined by the size of the bog and its stage of development, which determines bog–river interaction. The seasonal catchment-scale budget indicated that 80–97% of Zn and Pb and 47–74% of Cu and Cd from atmospheric inputs remained within the catchments.

The carbon (C) cycle in inland waters, including carbon concentrations in and carbon dioxide (CO₂) emissions from water surfaces, are at the forefront of biogeochemical studies, especially in regions strongly impacted by ongoing climate change. Towards a better understanding of C storage, transport and emission in Central Asian mountain regions, an area of knowledge that has been extremely poorly studied until now, here, we carried out systematic measurements of dissolved C and CO₂ emissions in rivers and lakes located along a macrotransect of various natural landscapes in the Sayan–Altai mountain region, from the high mountains of the Western Sayan in the northwest of Tyva to the arid (dry) steppes and semideserts in the intermountain basins in the southeast of Tyva on the border with Mongolia. New data on major hydrochemical parameters and CO₂ fluxes (fCO₂) gathered by floating chambers and dissolved organic and inorganic carbon (DOC and DIC, respectively) concentrations collected over the four main hydrological seasons allowed us to assess the current C biogeochemical status of these water bodies in order to judge possible future changes under climate warming. We further tested the impact of permafrost, river watershed size, lake area and climate parameters as well as ‘internal’ biogeochemical drivers (pH, mineralization, organic matter quality and bacterial population) on CO₂ concentration and emissions in lakes and rivers of this region and compared them with available data from other subarctic and mountain settings. We found strong environmental control of the CO₂ pattern in the studied water bodies, with thermokarst lakes being drastically different from other lakes. In freshwater lakes, pCO₂ negatively correlated with O₂, whereas the water temperature exerted a positive impact on pCO₂ in large rivers. Overall, the large complexity of counteracting external and internal drivers of CO₂ exchange between the water surfaces and the atmosphere (CO₂-rich underground DIC influx and lateral soil and subsurface water; CO₂ production in the water column due to dissolved and particulate OC biodegradation; CO₂ uptake by aquatic biota) precluded establishing simple causalities between a single environmental parameter and the fCO₂ of rivers and lakes. The season-averaged CO₂ emission flux from the rivers of Tyva measured in this study was comparable, with some uncertainty, to the C uptake fluxes from terrestrial ecosystems of the region, which were assessed in other works.

The relevance. Water erosion of soil is one of the priority environmental and economic problems of our time. This is due to the fact that soil is a limited resource, required for food production, carbon sequestration, regulation of water and nutrients, filtering pollutants, increasing biodiversity etc. Zonal soil types are degrading constantly as a result of population growth, deforestation, increase in arable land and climate change. Although water erosion is one the most serious cause of soil degradation, global patterns of erosion activity are still difficult to quantify. Various calculation and field measurements methods are currently used to assess the magnitude of soil washout. The data on soil washout from the slopes of arable land in the southern part of the Tomsk region, obtained by the various authors using different methods, are contradictory. The main aim: a brief overview of the factors in the development of soil erosion during snowmelt, assessment of the intensity and dynamics of erosion based on long-term field observations on arable land in the southern administrative districts of the Tomsk region and calculation methods. Objects: agricultural land (arable land) in the southeast of the Tomsk region. Methods: field measurements, computational method, laboratory and analytical methods. Results. Our observations have shown that the erosion hazard of agricultural land in the southeast of the Tomsk region is caused by a complex of interrelated natural and anthropogenic factors such as relief, underlying rocks and soils, climatic indicators, and land cultivation methods. The average annual washout from the slopes of arable land in the region over a 34-year observation period varies from 2-5 to 16-30 m(3)/ha per snowmelt, sometimes washout measure up 50-80 m(3)/ha. According to the calculated data, the mean annual values of the flush modulus fluctuate in the range of 4,0-9,4 m(3)/ha. Differences in soil washout assessments are explained by the imperfections of various methods that require improvement. The calculations do not take into account the uneven occurrence of the snow cover, microrelief, the presence of forest belts, and the shape of the slopes.