The study area selected for the TUNDRA project is the Basin of the Usa River in the East-European Russian Arctic. The area is located at the latitude of the Arctic Circle. It has a total surface area of nearly 100.000 square kilometres. The Usa River flows from the Ural Mountains in the East to the Pechora River in the West, which in turn drains into the Pechora Bay and the Barents Sea.
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The Usa Basin is unique in continental Europe for having extensive lowland tundra and permafrost. The region is particularly suitable to study the effects of Global Change in the Arctic because it includes major features like the Arctic and alpine (in the Ural Mountains) treelines and the southern limits of continuous and discontinuous permafrost, which are very sensitive to climatic changes. The Usa Basin also has a range of human impacts, from almost uninhabited to densely populated regions, from Indigenous economies (reindeer-herding, hunting, fishing) to Russian industrialisation (oil and gas fields, coal and ore mining), and from clean to polluted areas. The main industrial centres in the area, such as Vorkuta and Usinsk, are easily accessible from West-Europe, and logistics for fieldwork are not too complicated because a local infrastructure is present (roads, railways, and airports).
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The general study design for TUNDRA is a nested catchment experiment because the project includes a hydrological component. Plant cover and soils will be studied in detail at four selected local catchments in the North (lowland tundra), the Northeast (lowland tundra and Polar Urals), the South (lowland taiga and Pre-Polar Urals) and the Southwest (lowland taiga). Pollution will be measured along transects running North, East, South and West from the main industrial centres (Vorkuta, Inta and Usinsk). Social anthropologists will conduct interviews in rural and urban areas to assess the public perception of environmental degradation among inhabitants in the region.
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