Eco Centre of Tver University

About

Tver State University

Funding support: Federal Budget of the Russian Federation

Number of staff: 5

Overall aims of the centre

Environmental education and awareness-raising; development and introduction of environment-friendly technologies, scientific support of the Regional Red Data Book and Protected Areas Network, wetland research and monitoring.

Description of the centre

The EcoCentre is located in the city of Tver, European Russia, and works with local communities and land users over the whole Tver Region (Oblast) to gain support for nature conservation. The Chistoye Lake Visitor Centre, located in the Toropets District, provides a base for children’s summer camps and student fieldwork programmes, which are annually organised by EcoCentre.

Tver Region is very rich in wetlands, including 800 watercourses with total length of 17,000 km, 1,700 lakes, many reservoirs and ponds, among which are nine largest reservoirs of drinking water for Moscow and other adjacent settlements. Peatlands, one of the most extensive wetland types, cover 808,000 ha (10% of the Region’s area), many of which are valuable as peat deposits (15.4 billion m2).

These peatlands help to maintain the hydrological regime over extensive areas of the European Russia and neighbouring countries. Three major European Rivers, Volga, Zapadnaya Dvina (Daugava) and Dniepr of Caspian, Baltic and Black Sea basins, respectively, start in the peatland area of so called Great Watershed in western part of Tver Region. Regional peatlands have long been subjected to large-scale peat extraction; many of them still remain non-rehabilitated.