Elena Plekhanova

• Doctor of Philosophy
• University of Zurich

Arctic fires have become more frequent in recent decades. They release carbon to the atmosphere through burning organic material and degrading permafrost and thus accelerate global warming. Previous research highlighted climate variables as the driving factor of fire occurrence in the Arctic, largely ignoring the contribution of human activity. Her...

Climate warming enables easier access and operation in the Arctic, fostering industrial and urban development. However, there is no comprehensive pan-Arctic overview of industrial and urban development, which is crucial for the planning of sustainable development of the region. In this study, we utilize satellite-derived artificial light at night (...

Siberia experienced a prolonged heatwave in the spring of 2020, resulting in extreme summer drought and major wildfires in the North-Eastern Siberian lowland tundra. In the Arctic tundra, plants play a key role in regulating the summer land surface energy budget by contributing to land surface cooling through evapotranspiration. Yet we know little...

Motivation The goal of the Russian Arctic Vegetation Archive (AVA‐RU) is to unite and harmonize data of plot‐based plant species and their abundance, vegetation structure and environmental variables from the Russian Arctic. This database can be used to assess the status of the Russian Arctic vegetation and as a baseline to document biodiversity cha...

Arctic vegetation is crucial for fauna and the livelihoods of Northern peoples and is tightly linked to climate, permafrost soils, and water. Yet, a comprehensive understanding of climate change effects on Arctic vegetation is lacking. Protected areas cannot halt climate change but could reduce future pressure from additional drivers, like land use...

Arctic vegetation changes, such as increasing shrub-cover, are expected to accelerate climate warming through increased absorption of incoming radiation and corresponding decrease in summer shortwave albedo. Here we analyze mid-summer shortwave land-surface albedo and its change across the pan-Arctic region based on MODIS satellite observations ove...

Despite the importance of high-latitude surface energy budgets (SEBs) for land-climate interactions in the rapidly changing Arctic, uncertainties in their prediction persist. Here, we harmonize SEB observations across a network of vegetated and glaciated sites at circumpolar scale (1994–2021). Our variance-partitioning analysis identifies vegetatio...

Arctic vegetation changes, such as increasing shrub-cover, are expected to accelerate climate warming through increased absorption of incoming radiation and corresponding decrease in summer shortwave albedo. Here we analyze mid-summer shortwave land-surface albedo and its change across the pan-Arctic region based on MODIS satellite observations ove...

Arctic vegetation types provide food and shelter for fauna, support livelihoods of Northern peoples, and are tightly linked to climate, permafrost soils, lakes, rivers, and the ocean through carbon, energy, water, and nutrient fluxes. Despite its significant role, a comprehensive understanding of climate change effects on Arctic vegetation is lacki...

The majority of climate models predict severe increases in future temperature and precipitation in the Arctic. Increases in temperature and precipitation can lead to an intensification of the hydrologic cycle that strongly impacts Arctic environmental conditions. In order to investigate effects of future precipitation scenarios on ecosystems, preci...

The interaction of shortwave radiation with vegetation drives basic processes of the biosphere, such as primary productivity, species interactions through light competition, and energy fluxes between the atmosphere, vegetation, and soil. Here, we aim to understand the effects of leaf functional trait diversity on canopy light absorption. We focus o...

The genomes of mammals contain thousands of deleterious mutations. It is important to be able to recognize them with high precision. In conservation biology, the small size of fragmented populations results in accumulation of damaging variants. Preserving animals with less damaged genomes could optimize conservation efforts. In breeding of farm ani...

Landraces represent a valuable gene pool as a source for introgressing adaptive genes to modern varieties. The Vavilov All-Russian Institute of Plant Genetic Resources (VIR) chickpea collection contains 3380 accessions, most of which are landraces. The purpose of the paper is to investigate the phenotypic diversity of old chickpea landraces stored...

Chickpea (Cicer arietinum L.), a grain legume crop, is considered innovative for the Russian Federation. Over the past fifteen years, its area in our country have increased 20 times and reached 420,300 hectares in 2015. The growing demand of chickpea determines the necessity of breeding new varieties. One of the ways to improve the crop could be th...

The Vavilov Institute of Plant Genetic Resources (VIR), in St. Petersburg, Russia, houses a unique genebank, with historical collections of landraces. When they were collected, the geographical distribution and genetic diversity of most crops closely reflected their historical patterns of cultivation established over the preceding millennia. We emp...

Chickpea (Cicer arietinum L.) is the second grain legume for the area of cultivation in the world, and the third for the production. However, modern cultivars of chickpea are typically susceptible to a variety of diseases, and have modest drought tolerance. The improvement of the crop for adaptability could be carried out via introgression of valua...