The project was initiated by the Center for the Development of Kamchatka Natural Parks and supported by a grant from the Russian Presidential Foundation for Nature. The organizers note that the peninsula features unique natural ecosystems, which is under threat due to global climate change and growing human pressure due to active tourism development. The key challenge for the conservation of Kamchatka’s relatively intact ecosystems is the lack of up-to-date and detailed spatial data required for territorial planning, designing nature-based solutions for biodiversity conservation and mitigating the effects of climate change.
Roman Obabko specializes in ecology, phytosociology, and bryology. The young researcher's focus is on mosses and epiphytes, i.e. plants that grow on other plants, as well as on vegetation statistics and dynamics. In this project, the researcher is making geobotanical descriptions of mosses and lichens in sample plots.
View of Dygeren-Olegende Volcano
– What is similar to my main research topic is that we are currently working in the boreal zone – taiga territory within the temperate latitudinal belt of the Northern Hemisphere, characterized by cold winters and warm summers. Kamchatka has much in common with our vascular plant flora, but there are differences: e.g., they have no bilberry but lots of blueberry, and lingonberry is rare. Some species that are rare in our region are common here, such as Dryopteris expansa (the spreading wood fern), – shared Roman Obabko.
We must mention this was not the first expedition to the Russian Far East for the researcher from Karelia. In 2025, together with graduate and postgraduate students from Lomonosov Moscow State University, the researcher from the Forest Research Institute KarRC RAS worked in an expedition to the Amur Region to identify plant communities. There, scientists had to live at an altitude of 1,500 meters. During this trip, the researchers got lucky to fly by helicopter over the Zeya Reservoir.
Botanist Roman Obabko on a field trip to Stanovoy Ridge
– We worked on Stanovoy Ridge – a mountain chain which forms a natural divide between the Amur Region and Yakutia, so in effect we walked between two regions every day. Also, this is a boreal region, a cold land: there are some plant species in common with Karelia, but plenty of differences. In appearance, the nature is strikingly different from ours. I was particularly impressed by the thickets of rhododendron, – the botanist shared.
In 2020, Roman Obabko, together with a colleague from St. Petersburg State University, spent about a month in Chukotka studying the composition and structure of the peninsula’s bryophyte and lichen flora. During that trip, they established all the plots to be surveyed, collected lots of material for herbaria, and took over a thousand photographs of mosses and lichens.
Photos provided by Roman Obabko / Forest Research Institute KarRC RAS
