The idea was voiced at a meeting of the Russian Geographical Society on 27th April.
President Putin opened the meeting by thanking the Society for its contribution to the Year of Environment in Russia and for proposing a new program of geographical education. He also urged the members to work on a new atlas of Russia.
Later, the floor was given to Society Chairman, Minister of Defence Sergey Shoygu. He presented the first ever register of small rivers of Russia.
KFU Professor Oleg Yermolaev then gave a more detailed report to the audience, “Thanks to a grant from the Russian Geographical Society, we finished our work on a GIS portal about basins of small rivers on the majority of Russia's territory. The map includes Siberia, Far East, Pacific and Atlantic catchment areas; overall, 12 million square kilometers, which is approximately thrice the area of the European Union.
“We can now say that we have a national system of river basin maps. It comprises more than 350 thousand basins of small rivers with attached databases on dozens of environmental parameters and resources. I think that a breakthrough depends on cumulative potential in different areas. We often stop one step away from success. In this case, I feel like we are also one step away from introducing this database into various applications in the country.”
One of such applications, as Dr. Yermolaev said, could be an open geographical portal of rivers and river basins of Russia. He assured the audience that his colleagues are ready to work on such task.
Chairman Shoygu commented, “I am pleased to note that the involvement of our regional branches has been growing in recent years.”