Elena Salikhova

Biologist, ecologist

She has lived in Kaliningrad since 1977. She came from Leningrad, where she worked at the Botanical Institute of the USSR Academy of Sciences, following her husband, who had been assigned to Kaliningrad after completing his postgraduate studies at Leningrad State University. She completed her postgraduate studies in plant physiology and biochemistry at the Faculty of Biology of the Herzen Leningrad State Pedagogical Institute. She defended her PhD dissertation before the doctoral dissertation council of the All-Union Institute of Plant Industry (Leningrad) and was awarded the degree of Candidate of Biological Sciences. Since 1980 she has taught at the Faculty of Geography of the Russian State University (now the Immanuel Kant Baltic Federal University). She is an Associate Professor at the Department of Geography, Environmental Management and Spatial Development. Her scientific and professional interests include the sustainable development of landscapes, the genesis and dynamics of the soil cover of the Kaliningrad Region, the aesthetics of the urban environment, the role of the city's ecological framework, the fate of the gardens and parks of Kaliningrad and the region, and the ecological and hydrochemical state of the region's water bodies. She is the author of more than two hundred publications. Her most significant recent publications include the soil map of the Kaliningrad Region (Geographical Atlas of the Kaliningrad Region, 2011) and the monograph "Chronicles of Gardens and Parks (Königsberg–Kaliningrad)", 2008. She loves travel, poetry, Cornish Rex cats, trees, gardens and a good sense of humour.