Early stage
At the first stages of research there were 2-3 people who worked in the Department of Science and Research of the nature reserve. Their efforts were not enough. To conduct flora (vascular plants), lichen and fauna inventories the nature reserve invites researchers from the Avrorin Polar-Alpine Botanical Garden of the Russian Academy of Sciences (Kirovsk, Murmansk region).
Botanist V. Kostina with the assistance of research staff member M. Smetannikova took part in an international expedition and carried out field research, collected plants for herbarium and made the first annotated list of plants for a publication. In the expedition they took part in there were researchers from Russia, Norway and Finland. (Kostina, 1995, 1998, 2003).
Ad hoc floristic studies of aquatic plants and addition to the herbarium were later carried out by a postgraduate student of Petrozavodsk State University N. Kaneva, a researcher at the Avrorin Polar-Alpine Botanical Garden (Kaneva, Aspholm, 2006).
Let us note the botanists I. Blinova and T. Filimonova, who contributed to the development of botanical research in the nature reserve in its initial period (Nature Chronicles, 1997-2011).
Lichenologist T. Dudoreva from the Avrorin Polar-Alpine Botanical Garden inspected the lichen flora on the right bank of the Pasvik River. The first list of lichens of the nature reserve and its surrounding area and a complete collection of species appeared in the Nature Chronicles (Nature Chronicles..., 2003). By the beginning of the twenty-first century the nature reserve got its first yet incomplete list of mosses identified by A. Likhachev and O. Belkina from the Avrorin Polar-Alpine Botanical Garden (Nature Chronicles..., 2011).
Modern research
Since 2007 an expedition of scientists from the Forest Institute of Karelia Science Center of the Russian Academy of Sciences comes to the nature reserve every year.
Botanist A. Kravchenko conducted a detailed survey of the nature reserve, clarifies the list of vascular plants in the nature reserve and its surrounding area, collects plants for herbarium and makes a new, expanded annotated list of species, publishes new data on the findings of species (Kravchenko, 2009, 2011; Kravchenko, Sennikov, 2009 ; Kravchenko, Kuznetsov, 2012; Kravchenko, 2020).
At the same time the inventory of the lichen flora was carried out, areas previously not visited by lichenologists were inspected, both in the nature reserve and in the surrounding area in the Pasvik River valley. An annotated list was made by an international group of scientists and published (Fadeeva et al., 2011, 2013; Urbanavichyus, Fadeeva, 2013; Urbanavichyus, Fadeeva, 2018). The information was confirmed by the collection of lichens.
At this time the work on the survey of bryophytes (liverworts and leafy mosses) began as well. (Boychuk and Kuznetsov, 2012; Boychuk et al., 2012; Boychuk, 2013; Borovichev, 2013; Borovichev and Boychuk, 2018).
Mycologists O. Predtechenskaya, A. Ruokolainen, V. Krutov (Karelia Science Center of the Russian Academy of Sciences) and Yu. Khimich (Institute of Industrial Ecology of the North of Kola Science Centre of the Russian Academy of Sciences) conducted a research on aphyllophoroid fungi and basidiomycetes of the nature reserve, made collections (Khimich, 2010; Predtechenskaya, 2011; Ruokolainen et al., 2011; Krutov et al., 2012). N. Berlin, researcher from Lapland Nature Reserve was involved in the research on basidiomycetes. A consolidated list of fungi of Pasvik Nature Reserve was made as the result of cooperation between mycologists from different institutions (2016).
Since 2018 a group of scientists from the Forest Institute of Karelia Science Center of the Russian Academy of Sciences has been establishing a series of integrated monitoring areas to study the state of pine forests. The research has been led by A. Kryshenya (Doctor of Biological Sciences).