Elena A. Volkova (the anniversary of the researcher of mountains, steppe, desert, forest, meadow and bog vegetation)
Authors: Rachkovskaya E. I. , Karamysheva Z. V. , Litvinova N. P. , Sumerina I. Yu. , Khramtsov V. N. , Isachenko G. A. 
Published: May 2019

On May 3, 2018 Elena Anatolievna Volkova ce­lebrates her anniversary. She is a highly qualified phytogeographer, thoughtful field researcher, expert in mountain vegetation of Asia, tireless traveler. The field of her scientific interests is the regularity of vegetation cover, small- and large-scale mapping of vegetation in different regions of Eurasia. She has made a great contribution to the study of the composition and structure of vegetation cover of complex and inaccessible arid and subarid mountain areas of Central Asia.

E. Volkova began to work in deserts and steppes of Kazakhstan, and then 15 years studied arid plain and mountain regions of Mongolia. In Joint Soviet-Mongolian complex biological expedition of Academies of sciences of USSR and Mongolian People’s Republic E. Volkova investigated the deserts of Alashan Gobi, Trans-Altai Gobi and Dzhungarian Gobi. The result of these field works was a publication on the study of the relationship between the composition and structure of plant communities with the petrographic composition of rocks in melkosopochniks in different subzones and provinces of Gobi (Volkova, 1976); together with E. I. Rachkovskaya original vegetation maps of these extra-arid territories were created (Rachkovskaya, Volkova, 1977, 1980, etc.). The collected data on mountain vegetation were used to produce the vegetation map of Mongolia in the National Atlas (Karta..., 1990) and the monograph “Botanical geography of Mongolian and Gobi Altai” (Volkova, 1994). E. Volkova has made two vegetation maps: of Asia in atlas “Our Earth” (Волкова, 1996) and (together with I. Fedorova) of the World (scale 1: 60 000 000) for “Resources and Environment: World Atlas” (Volkova, Fedorova, 1998). In 2003 the monograph “Botanical geography of Kazakhstan and Central Asia (within the desert area)” was published in which E. Volkova is the author of a large section “Vegetation cover of mountains” and sub-section “Mountain provinces” in the section “Principles and basic units of regionalization” (Volkova, 2003a, b).

After the collapse of the Soviet Union, most of the arid areas of the country became inaccessible for research, and E. Volkova’ interests have turned to the vegetation of the Northwest of European Russia (Le­ningrad Region). The Botanical Institute of Russian Academy of sciences organized complex researches for the purpose of inventory of natural complexes and their components in territories valuable for nature protection, and also of areas of economic importance. The result of this work was the organization of natural protected areas in the Leningrad Region and Saint Petersburg and the publication of the “Atlas of natural protected areas of St. Petersburg” (Atlas..., 2013, 2016) and 11 collective monographs (2001–2017) in which E.Volkova is the constant co-editor and author of the sections on vegetation.

E. A. Volkova has published about 190 works, including articles in the journals “Proceedings of theRussianGeographical Society”, “Botanical journal”, “Vegetation of Russia”, “Biosphere”, the “Geobotanical mapping” (Volkova, Khramtsov 2018). She conti­nues to be an active field researcher and preparing new articles and monographs.