Department of Environmental Geology and Geochemistry

The Laboratory of Environmental Geology and Geochemistry flexibly conforms to the needs of study of natural changes of the Earth system, especially the understanding of climatic oscillations and paleoenvironmental changes in the youngest geological history, and influence of the human impacts on the environment. The interest in these problems has been constantly increasing in global scale in the last years. Multi-disciplinary orientation of the staff, necessary for the solution of environmental problems, is comparable to those of foreign teams. Research activities of the staff of the laboratory cover such scientific fields as mineralogy, geochemistry, sedimentology, pedology, climatology, geomorphology, ecology, etc. 
Significant activities of the laboratory have been focused on the biogeodynamics of chemical elements in the environment. Changes and long-term trends in element budgets caused by human activities and climatic oscillations have been monitored in experimental areas for the last 15 years. Methods of quantitative and qualitative field studies of environmental compartments has been complemented with laboratory experiments. The main focus of the research has been determination of the human activities impact on landscape and explanation of long-term trends in chemical load caused by insensitive approach to the environment in the past.”