The state of knowledge on biota along the Northern Sea Route area is considered within the work on the INSROP project II.1. A references database of Russian sources dealing with this biota was created. It numbers 963 references. The publications on different groups of plants and animals were analysed and annotated separately. All references are supported by 3 types of keywords including taxa, geography and problems discussed. A list of 36 references for general geographical and biological publications was created. A list of botanical publications concerning both coastal and marine flora numbers 57 references. A list of hydrobiological publications including works on invertebrates and protozoon consists of 297 items. For vertebrates (fishes, marine birds and mammals) 562 publications were found and annotated. All references are available both in the form of the list (Annex 5) and database (see description in the Annex 4). Published works can be found in different Russian libraries (see Annex 3).

An overview both of materials kept in different Russian institutions and ongoing and planned projects is given in the report. It contains information about the volume and quality of materials including reliability, availability, studied objects , covered area etc. as well as contact persons and addresses.

The main problems facing Arctic research are:

• uneven information support within the Arctic region, background data are absent for some regions;
• dissimilar data format derived from different extent of primary data treatment. As a rule only published data are fully available. Unpublished primary data kept in archives, unexamined collections, daybooks, databases will become available only after treatment by their possessors;
• most ongoing projects are studies not concerning the INSROP needs and combined they will not close all gaps in the knowledge.

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