Professor N.Yu. Zograf
The laboratory building, built in 1905, declared a monument of science and culture
The Hydrobiological Station «Lake Glubokoe» is located in the Ruza district of Moscow Region, about 90 km west of Moscow, on the shore of the lake of the same name. This oldest freshwater biological station in our country and the world was founded in 1891 on the initiative of N.Yu. Zograf, professor at Moscow University and chairman of the Department of Ichthyology of the Russian Imperial Society for the Acclimatization of Animals and Plants. Its first head was the future Academician S.A. Zernov. In subsequent years, the station was headed by the well-known biologists N.V. Voronkov, B.S. Greze, A.V. Rumyantsev, G.S. Karzinkin, and A.P. Shcherbakov.
From 1930 to 1939, the biological station was part of the research institutions of the Main Hydrometeorological Administration and was merged with the nearby Kosino Limnological Station into a single institution. In 1939, the Biological Station was transferred to the Academy of Sciences and became part of the Institute of Evolutionary Morphology of the USSR Academy of Sciences (now the A.N. Severtsov Institute of Ecology and Evolution RAS).
Lake Glubokoe is notable for the diversity of its water area and shores, its small size (about 60 ha), considerable depth (more than 30 m), remoteness from settlements, and the clarity of its waters. Its small size combined with the clear expression of features typical of much larger bodies of water (vertical stratification, etc.) makes this lake very convenient for scientific work. As was subsequently established, despite growing anthropogenic influence, Lake Glubokoe remains one of the few water bodies in the center of the Russian Plain that is almost unaffected by economic activity and can be regarded as an example of a natural reference site.
In 1945, the lake and its surroundings were included in the Glubokoe-Istra Nature Reserve, which was unfortunately soon abolished (in 1951). In 1966, a regional wildlife refuge was established there, still existing today, whose area was expanded in 1981 to 2,026 ha. The question of restoring a nature reserve in this area has been raised, but this has not been carried out.
Since 1972, the Freshwater Community Ecology Group has worked permanently at the station, headed by the station's scientific director, Prof., Dr. Sci. (Biol.) N.N. Smirnov; it later became a laboratory, which subsequently (in 2006) became part of the Laboratory of Ecology of Aquatic Communities and Invasions (headed by Academician Yu.Yu. Dgebuadze). Other units whose staff work at the station on a long-term basis are the Laboratory of Lower Vertebrate Behavior (headed by Academician D.S. Pavlov) and the Laboratory of Tropical Technologies (headed by Dr. Sci. (Tech.) V.A. Karpov). Their research is respectively concerned with the chemosensory ecology and ethology of amphibians and the long-term dynamics of their populations, the biology of the invasive predatory fish Perccottus glenii, and studies of the effect of various natural factors on industrial materials.
Lake Glubokoe in history and today
on the 125th anniversary of Russia's oldest hydrobiological station