Leadership lecture "The impact of soil pollution by heavy metals on agricultural land"

The performers of the Mega Grant under subprogram No. 4 held a leadership lecture on the results of a summer expedition in the West Kazakhstan region for the teaching staff of the UNESCO Department of Sustainable Development. 

In his recent Address to the people of Kazakhstan, President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev stressed that one of the key problems of the state remains the development of agriculture in the absence of full-fledged information.  The Head of State aims to ensure that the agro-industrial complex of the country will work according to new and stable rules starting next year. To do this, all the disparate information about the state of agricultural land, water resources, irrigation systems and transport accessibility will be combined on a single digital platform. Therefore, monitoring the state of the soil cover of agricultural lands is more relevant than ever. 

The main task of the scientific research under the Mega–grant subprogram "To assess soil contamination of the West Kazakhstan region with toxic chemicals as a result of industrial activity" for the current year was field research of the West Kazakhstan region and sampling of soil cover of agricultural lands for subsequent chemical analysis for the content of heavy elements.   The results of the summer field research were presented by the leading scientists of the subproject: Bazarbayeva T.A., Mukanova G.A. and Shimshikov B.E.  

The project executors acquainted the teachers of the department with the results of laboratory tests, told about the conditions of field research, encountered difficulties and gained new scientific experience. 

At the end of the discussion, the lecturers and the seminar participants discussed the possibilities of participating in the upcoming competition for grant funding from the Ministry of Education and Science.