Located about 40 miles from the city of Syktyvkar and the SSU campus, the Vychegda Field Station is conveniently located, yet provides a near wilderness experience. One can walk, or row a boat, for miles in every direction and experience wild nature. There are still large game to be found in the area, including brown bears, moose, and three species of large forest grouse. Fish are plentiful in the river, and we may have some for dinner.

The large field station building contains both sleeping quarters and laboratories and classrooms. But dress warmly, because we will dine in the open-air mess hall (protected from rain), and May can still be chilly! On such days, you will appreciate even more the banya (Russian sauna), which is only a short walk away. We may get to visit the small village of Ust-Logchim, a mile downriver, which was a former Gulag of the Stalin era.

The predominant ecosystem around the field station is a forest of Scotch pine (Pinus sylvestris), which grows in moist areas adjoining peat bogs as well as on high, dry sandy ridges and in the ecotone between. In those bogs, you will find a rich diversity of aquatic plants, including mosses and the insect-eating sundew. On the sandy ridges, you may crunch along through a thick carpet of "yagel"; (Cladonia sp.), also called reindeer lichen, because reindeer like to eat them. It'’s not really a plant; rather it is a dry body of an Ascomycete fungus inhabited by photosynthetic algal cells. This symbiotic relationship creates an organism that can grow just about anywhere it can attach itself, as long as there is sufficient sunlight. Poor soil (or no soil) and brutal climatic conditions are no obstacles to a lichen.

Close by on more fertile soils are forest stands of Siberian spruce (Picea obovata) and of birch (Betula pendula), with lush understories of shrubs and herbaceous flowering plants. In these areas, berries of many kinds may be found, including blueberry (Vaccinium myrtilus), cowberry (Vaccinium vitis-idae), cranberry (Oxycoccus sp.), cloudberry or salmon-berry (Rubus chamaemorus), strawberry (Fragaria sp.) and currant (Ribes sp.). Russian people love to collect wild berries, and also many varieties of mushrooms from these woods, especially during mid-summer.

Frogs and fishes are abundant in the river and its associated marshes and bogs, and we will try to net and trap some for study (or for dinner). On sandbars along the river, it is possible to find the exquisite missile-shaped fossil remains of belemnites, a group of Cephalopod Molluscs (related to squid and chambered nautilus) that went extinct at the end of the Age of Dinosaurs (Cretaceous Period).

Birds are plentiful in the area, including White Wagtail; Northern Wheatear; Great Spotted Woodpecker; several species of tits and of thrushes and of old-world warblers and of old-world flycatchers including Spotted Flycatcher; Sand Martins (that nest in burrows in the riverbanks); many species of shorebirds including Common Oystercacher, Little Ringed Plover, Temminck’s Stint Terek Sandpiper, Black-tailed Godwit and Eurasian Curlew, just to name a few. We will search for these and many others and li sten for their distinctive calls and songs, and we will capture some in mist nets for close examination.

Small mammals are abundant in the grassy fields near the station, especially voles and shrews of several species. We will trap some of these and prepare them for our museum collections. And, throughout the forest may be seen and heard the lively Siberian chipmunk (Tamias sibiricus).