Institute of the Ecology of the Carpathians of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine

Institute of the Ecology of the Carpathians of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine (Інститут екології Карпат Національної академії наук України; Instytut ekolohii Karpat Natsionalnoi akademiї nauk Ukrainy). The main center of scientific study of the Carpathian Mountains in Ukraine. It was founded in Lviv in 1974 as the Lviv branch of the Institute of Botany of the Academy of Sciences of the Ukrainian SSR. Since 1991 it has functioned as an independent scientific research institute of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine under its current name. The institute’s main research areas include a comprehensive study of ecosystems and geosociosystems of the Ukrainian Carpathians; the study of the ways to regulate and manage ecosystems and geosociosystems in order to optimize the production function, soil conservation, and water regulation; the elaboration of methods of biodiversity protection and conditions for sustainable development of the Carpathian region; and the study of sub-cellular and molecular mechanisms of plant ontogenesis and morphological and structural-functional variability of populations under external factors. The institute has 4 research departments: ecosystemology; population ecology; natural ecosystems protection; and ecomorphogenesis of plants. It also operates the center for collective use of scientific instruments known as the Center for Fluorescent Microscopy of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine. This center owns a fluorescent motorized microscope Axio Imager M 1 produced by the Carl Zeiss company and modernized in 2019—a unique piece of equipment that facilitates the interdisciplinary research in biology and medicine.

Prominent scholars associated with the institute developed several notable scientific schools, including experimental morphogenesis of archegonia (Andrii Lazarenko), territorial sozology (Stepan Stoiko), population ecology (Kostiantyn Malynovsky), and ecosystemology (Mykhailo Holubets). The institute operates the ‘Pozhyzhevska polonyna’ biological research station in the Carpathian Mountains. It publishes the periodic compendium Naukovi osnovy zberezhennia biotychnoї riznomanitnosti (15 vols, 2000–17). Its directors have been Mykhailo Holubets (1991–2007), Mykola Kozlovsky (2007–20), and Ivan Danylyk (2020–).

BIBLIOGRAPHY
The Institute’s official website: http://ecoinst.org.ua/

Serhiy Bilenky

[This entry was written in 2022.]