Smart Urban Nature laboratory congratulates its employees, foreign colleagues and the entire scientific and expert community with the coming New Year. 2020 has become a serious challenge for everyone without exception – the pandemic, the global lockdown, the cessation of flights between countries, and much more have hit not only the economy and many other areas, but also limited the capabilities of the scientific world. The usual format of conferences, seminars, field research was forced to change and go online. Nevertheless, we managed to adapt to the needs of the time and maintain the quality level of work, the atmosphere of cooperation and ambitious plans.
LAWN project partners update webinar 2020
By Dr. Diana Dushkova and Prof. Maria Ignatieva
On December 17, an online webinar of the LAWN 2020 project partners was organized by Dr. Diana Dushkova, Helmholtz Center for environmental research – UFZ Leipzig, Department of Urban and Environmental Sociology; Geography Department of Humboldt University Berlin, Germany and Prof. Dr. Maria Ignatieva, School of Design, University of Western Australia.
Professor Yakov Kuzyakov was named Highly Cited Researcher
Yakov Kuzyakov, a well-known soil scientist, a leading scientist at the Agricultural and Technological Institute in RUDN University (Russia) and a professor at King Saud University (Saudi Arabia), was awarded the title of highly cited researcher in the field of agricultural sciences (by Clarivate™).
The Highly Cited Researchers list includes scientists with the highest number of articles in the top 1% cited Web of Science citation in a particular field in the past year. In the field of Agricultural Sciences, 111 researchers have been awarded this title. And Yakov Kuzyakov turned out to be the only one scientist from a Russian university.
SUN Lab Scientists took part in Urban Soils Symposium
Experts of the Smart Urban Nature laboratory Vyacheslav Vasenev and Maria Korneikova made presentations in two different sessions of the 5th Annual Urban Soil Symposium “Soils: The Living Fabric of Health, 2020”. The event was organized by the Institute of Urban Soils of New York, RUDN University and TreePeople. Traditionally, the symposium is held in New York (USA) on the basis of the Institute of Urban Soils, but this year, amid the pandemic, the event took the format of a virtual meeting using a number of interactive video conferencing platforms.
Tree Talkers network expanded with a new location in Moscow
The SUN Lab’s team in collaboration with experts from Wood expertise center “Zdorovy Les” set up new devices in Gorky Park, one of the biggest and most attended parks in Moscow city center.
Before installation, experts from Zdorovy Les conducted a local research in the park. They found out 16 poplars of the same age and size but quite different in trunk condition – most of them were strongly decayed. Visually the state of the trees was rather different from their potential sustainability and trunk health. So these trees came up as the spots for 16 Tree Talkers set up.
Smart Urban Nature Lab took part in the NAUKA0+ Science Festival
XV Russian Science Festival NAUKA0+ took place from October, 9-21 in Moscow and many other regions of Russia. The largest Russian popular science project designed to establish a dialogue between science and society, educating schoolchildren, students and adults about the latest achievements of science in the field of physics, biology and medicine, ecology, humanities, etc. SUN Lab is an active participant in this event. Every year our scientists take part in lectures and workshops, both at the RUDN University and in the external events of the festival.
Scientists discussed the use of smart technologies in monitoring green spaces
On September 30, 2020, an international scientific seminar “Monitoring urban green infrastructures” was organized under the umbrella of the Department of Landscape Design and Sustainable Ecosystems of ATI RUDN University. The event was held in an online format and was devoted to a number of issues in the field of monitoring green infrastructure in cities using IoT technologies.
Experts and participants discussed topics such as express methods for assessing the physiological state of green spaces, the influence of environmental factors on the state of plants, timely diagnosis of plant diseases and the development of methods for plant protection. Among the participants of the seminar are experts from the Smart Urban Nature laboratory Vyacheslav Vasenev, Alexey Yaroslavtsev, Vasily Brykov, Yuri Dvornikov and Viktor Matasov as well as partners from the Russian Research Institute of Phytopathology, N.V. Tsitsin Main Botanical Garden of RAS and other organizations.
International Scientific Seminar “Monitoring of Urban Green Infrastructure”
SUN Lab of RUDN University invites to the international scientific seminar “Monitoring of urban green infrastructure”, which will be held online on the Microsoft Teams platform on September 30. The meeting starts at 15:30 Moscow time. The working language is English.
The seminar will focus on several issues in the field of monitoring of urban green infrastructure using IoT technologies. Experts and participants will discuss such topics as express methods for assessing the physiological state of green infrastructure, the influence of environmental factors on the state of plants, timely diagnosis of plant diseases and the development of methods for plant protection.
SUN Lab’s expert took part in online seminar on supercomputer technologies in climatology
Mikhail Varentsov, an expert from the Smart Urban Nature laboratory, presented the results of numerical modeling and experimental studies in the field of urban meteorology and climatology on the example of the Moscow megacity and Russian Arctic cities. The presentation took place September 23, 2020, on the 33rd Scientific and Educational Seminar on Supercomputer Modeling of the Climate System.
SUN Lab’s team took part in online conference on landscape ecology
On September 14-18, 2020 SUN Lab’s team represented by Anastasia Konstantinova and Victor Matasov took part in the 1st International conference «Landscape Science and Landscape Ecology: Considering Responses to Global Challenges» hosted by IALE-Russia and Lomonosov Moscow State University. Due to the restrictions induced by the Covid-19 pandemic the event took place online but still gathered almost 200 participants from Russia, Germany, Austria, Netherlands, Sweden, Switzerland, USA and many other countries.