In 2024, the Lake Baikal Foundation for Environmental Applications and Research will provide financial support to the record-breaking Russian science project “Point № 1”, long-term environmental monitoring program of Lake Baikal, for the eighth time.

The Point № 1 project is an example of a unique scientific program on a global scale. Since 1945, a team of scientists from the Research Institute of Biology of Irkutsk State University has been taking samples from Lake Baikal weekly without fail at the “pelagic station № 1” (“Point № 1”) located in Southern Baikal, opposite the village of Bolshye Koty (2.7 km from the coast, above a depth of 800 m), then identifying hundreds of species zoo- and phytoplankton under the microscope and forming a valuable database of indicators of the lake ecosystem state.

The data obtained as a result of monitoring are annually included in the global international climate report “State of the Climate”, as well as in the report of the Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment of the Russian Federation “on the state of Lake Baikal and measures for its protection”.

The head of the grant project at ISU is a young scientist, Candidate of Sciences is Biology Olga Rusanovskaya.