Herbaria of Russia: Role in the Study of Biodiversity of the Country, Problems of Conservation and Rational Use

To preserve the biodiversity on Earth, it is necessary to take an inventory of all forms of life as soon as possible, and this task is especially relevant for poorly studied territories. The terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems of Russia represent the largest array of natural extratropical ecosystems in Eurasia. To solve the problem of flora and fauna inventory, biological collections acquire a special significance; a number of reviews attracted the attention of the scientific and civil society to the problem of conservation and increasing use of collections. In this article, the role of herbaria in the study of biodiversity in Russia is studied on the basis of a quantitative analysis of the country’s collections and the degree of their digitalization and integration into a global network of biological collections. It was concluded that the herbarium fund of Russia is insufficient in terms of the number of samples and is unevenly distributed across the regions; the lowest number of plant species is available for a number of regions in the northeast of Russia. About a half of all Russian herbaria are not registered in the Index Herbariourum and, accordingly, are not integrated into the global information system on biodiversity. The problem of preservation of herbarium collections is also highlighted here; the ways to solve it and prospects for the use of herbaria in the future are outlined. The authors suggest that the following priority measures should be taken: (1) the formation of a legal framework for working with biocollections, which, in particular, will make it possible to recognize the herbarium collections as objects of cultural and scientific heritage and provide special funding for the collections; (2) introduction of centralized registration of Russian herbaria in to practice and their inclusion in the international database; (3) prohibition on writing off herbarium collections by organizations; (4) an increase in the pace of digitalization of botanical collections; (5) staffing herbaria with professional researchers; introduction of a course on herbarium management in specialized universities; (6) allocation of separate rooms for herbaria equipped with specialized cabinets and ventilation.