Taymyr Nature Reserve

This article investigates state reserves as a comprehensive object of public administration amid the transformation of Ukraine’s political and economic system and the growing risks of security threats. It is substantiated that state material reserves, as a strategic element of national security, not only stabilize the economy but also ensure the resilience of defense, energy, critical infrastructure, and humanitarian security sectors. Based on the analysis of the legal framework, practices of the State Agency for the Management of Reserves of Ukraine, and comparison with EU models, the key problems in managing state reserves are identified: institutional fragmentation, outdated planning mechanisms, insufficient integration with risk and crisis forecasting systems, limited financial support, and low digitalization of processes. It is demonstrated that the Ukrainian State Research Institute “Resurs” is a key scientific and analytical partner of the central executive authority responsible for forming and implementing state policy in the field of state reserves. UkrNDI “Resurs” is tasked with providing comprehensive scientific-methodological, expert-analytical, and technological support for state policy in managing state reserves. The Institute is being developed as a next-generation scientific and analytical center, combining research, forecasting, technological development, and scientific-expert support for state policy in the area of state reserves. Its uniqueness lies in the integration of fundamental science, applied research, and practical implementation through managerial, economic, legal, and technological instruments. The article reveals the political-economic nature of state material reserves as a tool of strategic state intervention in market processes, allowing compensation for supply-demand asymmetries under external threats. A conceptual model for improving public administration of state reserves is proposed, including: modernization of stock planning systems based on a risk-oriented approach; integration with European mechanisms such as RescEU and the European critical infrastructure; enhancement of transparency and digital monitoring of flows; and institutional reform of the material reserve management system to increase its adaptability and resilience. It is shown that the adaptation of European reserve management standards will enhance the efficiency of the national crisis response system and consolidate Ukraine’s economic resilience during martial law and post-war recovery

Assessing responses of species, assemblages and habitats to environmental pressures or management actions is often challenging, but essential to preserve marine ecosystems, their functions and associated services. Adjusting management practices based on impact assessment and climate scenarios is a central aspect for MPAs that requires approaches capable of capturing the dynamics of marine life and appraise responses and alterations.Recording sounds in ecosystems allows to investigate ecological complexity from species to communities, and habitats over days and months. Furthermore, as sounds are linked to behaviours, variations in sound production reflect responses to environmental changes or human impacts. Based on multiple eco-acoustic studies within Western Mediterranean MPAs over several years, we show how acoustic fish communities as well as the acoustic courtship behaviour of vulnerable fish species vary with protection measures and human impact. Multivariate analyses and linear models reveal that acoustic diversity and courtship behaviour not only reflect the effectiveness of protection measures (i.e., zonation), but are also negatively related to human presence and activities, as highlighted by a highly significant decrease in sound abundance and richness with increasing boat traffic and recreational diving. Moreover, the analyses of multi-year datasets on reproductive sites reveal temporal variations of courtship calls that reflect diel biorhythms but also seasonal fluctuations that are partly altered by human activities and environmental changes. Finally, we also illustrate that analysing temporal variations allows to identify peaks in courtship calling that can be used as a proxy to identify sensitive periods during which human activities such as recreational diving and vessel traffic can be dislocated or reduced. This kind of information supports the definition of sustainable and targeted management practices, aiming at protecting functional sites and biodiversity hotspots while maintaining socio-economic activities. This work clearly highlights that long-term eco-acoustic monitoring is essential in providing an integrative and dynamic view of coastal ecosystems and organism-environment relationships in the face of environmental changes, and in supporting adaptive management.

The EU's 2030 Biodiversity Strategy and the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework call for 30% coverage of land and sea protected areas and strict protection for 10% of land area to prevent and reverse biodiversity loss. Ukraine has declared its aspiration to integrate into the European Union and must back up its statements with action and do everything to achieve such ambitious conservation goals. Like many European countries, Ukraine faces great challenges on this route. The significant level of anthropogenic transformation of the territories makes it very difficult to find new areas to expand the boundaries of the nature reserve fund. The practical steps to create nature reserves are significantly limited by legal mechanisms that guarantee land users' ownership of the relevant land plots. An important task in nature conservation is to develop indicators that can clearly and easily demonstrate the importance of areas for conservation. Such tools are necessary to convince policy makers and land users of the need to protect the relevant areas. The indicators of importance for biodiversity conservation should be scale-independent, as both large areas and small areas are important for conservation. In this article, we consider the case of a project to expand the boundaries of the Dnipro-Orylskiy Nature Reserve by adding five areas directly adjacent to it. The number of species included in the various Red Data Lists was chosen as an indicator of the conservation value of the territory. The species-area relationship was used to assess the role of scale. The number of species on the Red Lists was considered instead of the classical relationship that considers the total number of species in a community. The normalised deviation from the regression relationship was considered as an indicator of the conservation value of the respective area, which is statistically independent of the area of the site. The different Red Lists are compiled according to different criteria, so the indicator of conservation value for each Red List focuses on the relevant conservation aspect. The results of the conservation value assessment can be presented graphically, which clearly demonstrates the role of the respective areas in the maintenance of biological diversity. The proposed algorithm for assessing conservation value can be applied to a wide range of environmental protection tasks. In terms of further research, it is important to assess the role of ecosystem function assessment in the design of protected areas.

Smolny Island is a specially protected natural area of regional importance aimed to preserve a unique natural ecosystem of typical floodplain landscapes of the latitudinal section of the Ob River. The purpose of this research is to obtain primary data on the species composition and state of algological, polyporale communities and insects-xylophages of the Smolny Island natural reserve. The standard algological, mycological and entomological research methods were used. The original studies results for several components of the ecosystem are presented for the first time. The composition, structure, occurrence of freshwater algae, forest, polyporale communities and forest insects pests were investigated. The freshwater algocenoses of the island have a typical regional composition, in summer there is a tendency to cenosis characteristic of the region's swamps (diatom-euglena viridis type) in autumn there's diatom, with low occurrence of species. An increased saprobity of the studied waters was detected. In total, 12 insects xylophages species of the Agaricomycetes class were found in forest communities (coniferous, floodplain, small-leaved cenosis), with the richest species community in the test plot of small-leaved forest and the least variety in the coniferous one. No great risk for the development of a mass insects-xylophages area in the test plots was revealed, but the constant monitoring of the forest stock of the Smolny Island natural reserve is necessary to prevent the development of invasions and preserve the biodiversity of the island. The research results can be recommended as special diagnostic methods for tracking the diversity and condition of island communities.

<div> <p><span>Measurements of the atmospheric sources and sinks of carbon dioxide (CO<sub>2</sub>) and methane (CH<sub>4</sub>) in the pan-Arctic domain are extremely sparse that limits our knowledge of carbon cycling over this dramatically sensitive environment and making predictions about a fate of carbon conserved in currently frozen ground. Especially critical are the gaps in the arctic latitudes of Siberia, covered by the vast permafrost underlain tundra, where only few continuous atmospheric observation stations are currently operational.</span></p> </div><div> <p><span>We present the first two years of accurate continuous observations of atmospheric CO<sub>2</sub> and CH<sub>4</sub> dry mole fractions at the new atmospheric carbon observation station located near the Dikson settlement (73.33° N, 80.34° E) on the seashore of the western part of the Taimyr Peninsula in Siberia. Data quality control of trace gas measurements is achieved by regular calibrations against WMO-traceable reference gases from pressurized dry air tanks filled at the Max Planck Institute for Biogeochemistry (Jena, Germany). Associated meteorological variables permit evaluation of the climate variability of the local environment and provide a background for screening and interpreting the greenhouse gases (GHG) data records. </span><span>Here we summarize the scientific rationale of the new site, give technical details of the instrumental setup, analyse the local environments and present CO</span><sub>2</sub><span> and CH</span><sub>4</sub><span> fluctuations in the arctic atmosphere. Along with the temporal variability of GHG’s, we provide an overview of the angular distribution of detected GHG signals in the region and their input to the atmospheric fluctuations on the measurement site. Observation records deal with the daytime mixed layer and may be considered as representative throughout the vast area (~500–1000 km), and cover the period from September 2018 to September 2020.</span></p> </div><div> <p><span>The </span><span>reported study</span><span> was funded by Russian Foundation for Basic Research, Krasnoyarsk Territory and Krasnoyarsk Regional Fund of Science, project number 20-45-242908, RFBR project </span><span>18-05-60203</span><span> and </span><span>by the Max Planck Society (Germany)</span></p> </div>

Under climate warming, migratory birds should align reproduction dates with advancing plant and arthropod phenology. To arrive on the breeding grounds earlier, migrants may speed up spring migration by curtailing the time spent en route, possibly at the cost of decreased survival rates. Based on a decades-long series of observations along an entire flyway, we show that when refuelling time is limited, variation in food abundance in the spring staging area affects fitness. Bar-tailed godwits migrating from West Africa to the Siberian Arctic reduce refuelling time at their European staging site and thus maintain a close match between breeding and tundra phenology. Annual survival probability decreases with shorter refuelling times, but correlates positively with refuelling rate, which in turn is correlated with food abundance in the staging area. This chain of effects implies that conditions in the temperate zone determine the ability of godwits to cope with climate-related changes in the Arctic.

<p>The features of the plant community phylogenetic organization of the Dnipro arena within the nature reserve "Dnieper-Orelsky» and the regularities of its spatial variation involving remote sensing of the earth's surface data have been stated. Materials have been collected in the period of 2012-2016 within a nature reserve. Research polygon is within the first terrace (arena) of the river Dnieper valley. The sandy steppe, meadow, forest and marsh communities in the river Protoch floodplain and beam Orlova, as well as artificial pine plantations have been found as being present within research polygon. The vegetation description has been carried out on sites 10×10 m (100 m<sup>2</sup>). Total 94 descriptions of the geobotanical sample have been made. Data on plant phylogeny have been obtained by Phylomatic service. Phylogenetic diversity of the communities has been assessed by indices Feith, Simpson and Shannon. Phylogenetic analysis has been performed by means of a double principal coordinate analysis (DPCo). Earth remote sensing data in the public domain have been obtained from EarthExplorer. Vegetation index have been calculated by images from the Sentinel satellites. Digital elevation model has been constructed with the <em>Shuttle Radar Topography Mission</em> (SRTM) data. At the points in space where the geobotanical samples were collected, the value of spatial predictors has been extracted (vegetation indices and geomorphological indicators derivated from DEM).</p><p>A multiple linear regression analysis has been conducted between the values of the axes obtained by DPCoA and environment predictors. The kernel-based machine regression has been used for modeling spatial patterns of dependent variables. The vegetation cover has been found to be represented by 189 species within the investigated polygon. Abundance Phylogenetic Deviation (APD) for the investigated metacommunity has been evaluated to –0.53 which is statistically significantly different from random alternatives (<em>p</em> = 0.001).</p><p>APD negative value indicates that phylogenetic organization of the investigated metacommunity is overdispersed. Permutation procedure have allowed to establish that the DPCoA-axes eigenvalues obtained from the real phylogenetic tree was significantly higher than their own number for the random phylogenetic trees for the first seven axes. This indicates that the first seven axes are useful for additional information on metacommunity ordination structure. The axes 1, 2, 3 and 6 largely have been found to be labeled by vegetation index. This means that decryption of satellite images may be interpreted in terms of recent phylogenetic features of vegetation. Axis 4 and 7 have marked by geomorphological predictors. Axis 5 to some extent independent of the predictors considered as a reflection of digression-demutation vegetation caused by anthropogenic impacts.</p>

Based on long-term observations, Carabus blaptoides rugipennis is a polytopic, little specialized malacophagous subspecies widespread across Kunashir Island, Kuriles. Its reproduction pattern is autumnal-summer, with low fertility, two larval instars, and hibernation as larvae and adults. The insular population is characterized by considerable variability, sometimes comparable to differences between subspecies. A new synonym is established: Carabus (Damaster) blaptoides rugipennis (Motschulsky, 1861) = Carabus (Damaster) blaptoides simushirensis Obydov, 2008, syn. nov. At present there is no direct threat of an abundance drop of this species in the Kurile Islands.

Identifying natural populations that might be considered separate units using morphology, genotype or both is important in understanding the process of speciation and for conservation. We examined the relationships between the only two subspecies of the most numerous Arctic seabird, the Little Auk Alle alle, using both morphological (wing and head‐bill lengths) and genetic data (482 base pairs of the mitochondrial control region and seven nuclear microsatellite loci). We found significant morphological differences between the subspecies, A. a. polaris being significantly larger than the nominate A. a. alle. However, we did not find the subspecies to be differentiated at either mitochondrial DNA or at microsatellite loci. Consequently, one evolutionary significant unit is proposed. The similarity of the two subspecies at neutral genetic markers may be due to contemporary gene flow between populations, as well as large population sizes both in the present and in the past, combined with recent post‐glacial colonization of the Artic.

The title of this opening chapter in the author's new book on activist investors refers to Carl Icahn's solution to the “agency” problem faced by the shareholders of public companies in motivating corporate managers and boards to maximize firm value. During the 1960s and '70s, U.S. public companies tended to be run in ways designed to increase their size while minimizing their financial risk, with heavy emphasis on corporate diversification. Icahn successfully challenged corporate managers throughout the 1970s and 1980s by buying blocks of shares in companies he believed were undervalued and then demanding board seats and other changes in corporate governance and management.This article describes the evolution of Icahn as an investor. Starting by investing in undervalued, closed‐end mutual funds and then shorting shares of the stocks in the underlying portfolio, Icahn was able to get fund managers either to liquidate their funds (giving Icahn an arbitrage profit on his long mutual fund/short underlying stocks position) or take other steps to eliminate the “value gap.” After closing the value gaps within the limited universe of closed‐end mutual funds, Icahn turned his attention to the shares of companies trading for less than his perception of the value of their assets.As the author goes on to point out, the strategy that Icahn used with such powerful effect can be traced to the influence of the great value investor Benjamin Graham. Graham was a forceful advocate for the use of shareholder activism to bring about change in underperforming—and in that sense undervalued—companies. The first edition of Graham's investing classic, Security Analysis, published in 1934, devoted an entire chapter to the relationship between shareholders and management, which Graham described as “one of the strangest phenomena of American finance.”