Hydropower development causes a multitude of negative effects on freshwater ecosystems, and to prevent and minimize possible damage, environmental impact assessments must be conducted and optimal management scenarios designed. This paper examines the impacts of both existing and proposed hydropower development on the transboundary Amur River basin shared by Russia, China, and Mongolia, including the effectiveness of different tools and measures to minimize damage. It demonstrates that the application of various assessment and conservation tools at the proper time and in the proper sequence is the key factor in mitigating and minimizing the environmental impacts of dams. The tools considered include basin-wide assessments of hydropower impacts, the creation of protected areas on rivers threatened by dam construction, and environmental flows. The results of this work show how the initial avoidance and mitigation of hydropower impacts at early planning stages are more productive than the application of any measures during and after dam construction, that the assessment of hydropower impacts must be performed at a basin level rather than be limited to a project implementation site, and that the full spectrum of possible development scenarios should be considered. In addition, this project demonstrates that stakeholder analysis and robust public engagement are as crucial for the success of environmental assessments as scientific research is for the protection of river basins.

The Russian Far East is a region between China and the Russian Arctic with a diverse climatological, geophysical, oceanic, and economical characteristic. The southern region is located in the Far East monsoon sector, while the northern parts are affected by the Arctic Ocean and cold air masses penetrating far to the south. Growing economic activities and traffic connected to the China Belt and Road Initiative together with climate change are placing an increased pressure upon the Russian Far East environment. There is an urgent need to improve the capacity to measure the atmospheric and environmental pollution and analyze their sources and to quantify the relative roles of local and transported pollution emissions in the region. In the paper, we characterize the current environmental and socio-economical landscape of the Russian Far East and summarize the future climate scenarios and identify the key regional research questions. We discuss the research infrastructure concept, which is needed to answer the identified research questions. The integrated observations, filling in the critical observational gap at the Northern Eurasian context, are required to provide state-of-the-art observations and enable follow-up procedures that support local, regional, and global decision making in the environmental context.

This article describes several important topics in river management relationships between the Chinese, Mongolian and Russian governments, such as hydropower, water transfer and flood control, to illustrate various less known aspects of transboundary river basin management patterns in the Amur River basin. This is intended to establish a baseline account of transboundary water management in this shared river basin in the wake of major changes dictated by China’s wider transboundary and domestic policies such as the Belt and Road Initiative and Ecological Civilization and to consider to what extent the emerging shifts in environmental and development policies have already been manifested in cooperation on the transboundary river.

Data of remote sensing of the Earth surface were used to carry out thematic mapping of watercourses affected by gold mining in the Amur R. basin and to evaluate their characteristics. GIS-technology...

We examine the selection criteria for satellite images and methods of processing them in the process of mapping underwater landscapes using remotely sensed data, discuss the interpretation principles...

The application of two approaches to radiometric correction of Landsat data and their further classification has made it possible to compile maps of the distribution pattern of sea grass at the East...