Even during the formation of the IPY national program there was a critical issue of the absence of proposals for a national program from some specialized institutions leading long-term world-known works in the Arctic like the Botanical Institute RAS, the Institute of Ecology and Evolution RAS, the all-Russian Research Institute for Environmental protection, institutes and research centers in Arkhangelsk, Novosibirsk, Krasnoyarsk, Irkutsk, Magadan, Yakutsk and Vladivostok, including regional research centers in the Arctic. This is largely determined by the fact that the trust funding of projects of the national IPY program on this direction was not planned, and available international contacts of scientists from these organizations allowed to find other forms of participation in IPY researches. Materials presented in this volume were also obtained during projects, which were carried out under the national program. Those projects did not receive additional funding and got one from funds of certain institutions. Additional financing of works from international or national sources (IPY project) is stipulated in special references.

Before the detailed presentation of works of authors, we want to draw attention of readers to the astonishing fact which is noticed by many polar researches at IPY meetings: in this global international cooperation biogeographical and environmental projects on the study of polar marine and terrestrial ecosystems dominate in number, size and scope.

Indeed, one of the authors during the work group arrangement of the Science Committee of the Arctic Council (ISIRA) on the international research of the Russian Arctic made the analysis of implementation results of the international and the national program for the third IPY. The preliminary analysis showed that despite the IPY tradition to focus on meteorological and geophysical research biogeographical and ecological projects aimed at the analysis of contemporary dynamics of biota and ecosystems, or at the paleoecological reconstruction of stages of the evolution of the nature of polar regions during the Pleistocene and Holocene (Table 1) were dominant in its category.

Table 1. The share of projects on the biota and ecosystems research in IPY national research programs of countries actively participating in the study of polar regions of the Earth

The analysis concerns projects (about 1270 from nearly 60 countries) which are presented on the web site HYPERLINK «http://www.ipy.org». These projects make the basis of IPY national programs. Actually cluster projects of the IPY International Programme (166 scientific and 52 educational ones) which were selected by the Joint Committee consisting of experts in the field of earth sciences, as well as representatives of international organizations like WMO, ICSU, the Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission, the International Arctic Science Committee and the Scientific Committee on Antarctic research, have a clear focus on «classical» directions of the IPY research – meteorology, geophysics, glaciology, oceanography, geology. Such projects as the «Marine life in Antarctica», «Biodiversity of the Arctic basin», «Evolution and biodiversity in the Antarctic» and others are among them. Moreover, a significant number of projects on social and educational topics were also devoted to problems of a «wildlife» in the Arctic and the Antarctic, and some large international IPY expeditions included biological and ecological directions of investigations. Paradoxically this situation, in our opinion, reflects a change in priorities of polar research and shows an important indicatory role of the polar biota during the estimation of the current natural and anthropogenic climate and environmental fluctuations.