Scientist Spotlight: Anya Suslova

Anya Suslova has been officially working at Woodwell Climate Research Center as a research assistant since 2016, but her work with Woodwell Climate and studying rivers started long before that. Her story is truly incredible—you’re bound to say “wow” out loud while reading about it. But you don’t have to take our word for it, we caught up with Anya, who generously shared the deep connection and passion she has for her work studying our global rivers and why it’s so important to know where you come from.

Q: Let’s start at the beginning. How did you get involved with river science at 13?

Anya Suslova: I grew up in a small town, about 3,000 people in the Russian Arctic, so above the Arctic Circle and on a big river, the Lena. It's very remote. And my dad is a captain of a river boat. It's a pretty big ship. And he does the navigation because the river is so huge. So he measures the depth of the river and puts buoys and signs on the land to allow other big ships to navigate. He's been doing that all his life actually, since he started working. In 2003, I guess I just turned 14 that summer, a group of scientists chartered my dad's boat, and I had no idea about it.

I was actually coming back from my summer camp and I was hanging out with my dad in the boat. And then the next day I see a group of people coming in and amongst them, Max Holmes, who was a very tall guy. He would be walking into the ship and be hitting light bulbs with his head. And I've never seen an American before. I've never seen a scientist before. So that was very exciting for me. And of course at the time I didn't speak any English, so I was just very curious what they were doing. My journey was from Yakutsk, which is a big city up the river further south. To get to my town, it would take a day down the river, so I went.

And then I asked my dad and they were going down further, closer to the Arctic Ocean to do the science and asked my dad if I could join for the cruise. He said yes.

So I joined the trip. It was fascinating. They would collect water samples and they had the same protocol every day, multiple times a day, so I would observe. Then I started helping them by just holding bottles. And then I would remember the protocol, all the steps they need to make. And I remember one time Max missed some step in between. I tapped his shoulder and said, “No, you're supposed to do this now.” It was fun.

We would have a lot of conversations, and Max didn't speak any Russian and I didn't speak English, but somehow we crossed that barrier with sign language. By the end of the trip, Max sat down with me with the help of a translator. He said, “It's so hard for us to come down here all the way from US to collect the water samples. And these water samples can tell us so much about what's happening in this huge watershed you live in… If we leave you some bottles, will you be able to collect samples?”

I said, “Yeah, I can do it.” I lived right next to the railroad. My dad has a snow machine, it will be fun. He left me a bunch of bottles and he was gone. We did not communicate because, well, first I couldn't write in English and I didn't have internet at home.

*Dr. Max Holmes passing out sampling kits to students in Lena, Siberia in 2008. Photo by Chris Linder.*

My dad and I would go out every two weeks, collect water samples through the winter, and I would write down the temperature observations and the date it was collected. And the next summer, the scientists came down again and they chartered the boat. I showed them all the samples I collected. They were amazed and I continued to help, and then they involved students in my school. So there was another kind of project that grew out of just the inspiration of me as a child, collecting samples as a student. Then there were other schools, and in Alaska it was called Student Partner Projects where students would help scientists collect samples.

That was how I met Max. We kept in touch for many years. So I finished high school and I did college education, and when I turned 18, it was the first time I could travel abroad without a guardian, so that's when I was invited to come to Woodwell for the first time. And I came in and there was a big talk at a science conference in D.C. and by the time I was 18, I learned some English, so I spoke in D.C. at this big conference. It was really fun, and that's how I started my journey. I came maybe three or four times to Woodwell as an intern.

Then I got my master degree, and one day Max told me, “So we actually have funding to hire you. Do you want to move?”

I quit my job in Russia and I was here the next month.

*Dr. Max Holmes and Anya Suslova of Woodwell Climate Research Center in Yukon Kuskokwim, Alaska*

Q: Wow. What was it about that connection that sparked your interest, that made you want to continue learning more and continuing that connection with Max and Woodwell?

AS: Yeah. Well, there were a couple of things. One is just the novelty of being connected to a scientist from U.S. I would see only on TV. But the other thing was feeling that I can contribute to really understanding, because Max did a really good job saying this one sample, if it's not collected, nobody will hear the story of the river, and you can contribute to science that way. I was like, that's the easiest way to be a scientist. I just go out in the river, that's what I do. And then they will do the work, analyzing it and stuff like that. I thought being part of something so big beyond me was fascinating.

Q: Your dad was a boat captain, so you had a connection to the river before you met Max. What is your story with your home river before you started sampling?

AS: I am an Indigenous person, so a lot of people from our area are traditional reindeer herders, and that's what my heritage is from my mom's side. We grew up very close to land. My mom's ancestors lived on that land for a long time. My dad came from another region. He fell in love with my mom and he stayed and that was very rare. I spent a lot of time just being in nature. My dad would fish a lot, provide for the family. He catches a lot of fish, so most of the food in the house, the protein, would be local fish.

The [Lena] River, because it's so powerful and strong, it can take the whole village down. It has so much power. It always had so much respect from the community and is referred to as “a mother.” We have rituals with the river where we go every spring when there is an ice breakup, we do the prayer and we feed the river. So there is a big spiritual component also. That's why I continue studying rivers. I think they're fascinating in that they’re the living spirits.

And actually on my wedding band, I have an engraving of the river.

*Anya preparing salmon eggs on the side of the Kwethluk River. Photo by John Land Le Coq*

Q: Now you're a scientist at Woodwell, how has the story changed for you? Is there more depth to it?

AS: Well, amazingly, throughout these years, my dad kept collecting the water samples. We have 20 years of data that was recently published not only for the Lena River, but for other rivers. We have other community scientists in Russia that have been collecting it. The project lasted until the war in Ukraine started. Politically, it was impossible to continue funding of the project in Russia, so it stopped. Now, unfortunately, I wish I didn't have to tell this, that the science that lasted for 20 years had to stop because of the war, but that's the reality.

When the project started, it was so understudied. So the idea was just to understand what the baseline was and what the chemistry looks like, but then as the project went on, we now have a good track record. When we look at the data and plot it and do chemistry modeling, we see that even within 20 years, which in a timescale of nature, it's not that much time, but we see big changes that reflect how quickly the Arctic is changing. And of course, I mean, that's not a surprise to me at all. That’s what my dad observes working on the river all his life; how much the environment has changed. And we have proof with this science.

Q: Can you talk a little bit more about those changes? What have you seen in your life from that kid who spent time on the river to now? How has climate change impacted your home there?

AS: So fishing season is very important for our people. There's a winter fishing season when people go drill holes on the ice and put nets in and catch a lot of fish this way, but now that season, and it used to be very safe to go on ice, people would drive snow machines, but now because the ice is getting thinner and the spring is much faster, the ice goes much faster. It's very dangerous sometimes. A lot of snow machines go underwater and it's creating this dangerous situation. Then the river temperatures are high. The seasonality has dramatically changed. Where usually in the Arctic it's a very short summer, cold, long winter, and not really spring and fall. But now there's the shoulder season that is longer and it's disrupting the way people fish and hunt. So it's changing a way of life.

Q: Can you share a bit more about that way of life?

AS: In my community, I believe it's very important to continue the way of life because it gives people their identity. When you are born with something and you know who you are and you learn something from your ancestors, it gives you solid ground. And when it's taken away from you, you cannot continue. It's all changed. You’re kind of lost in the world.

And it's sad to see. I mean, I'm not worried. I think our culture is actually now as strong as it's ever been. And yeah, people continue living the native way of life and we have celebrations and it'll persevere. But I think it's so important to know where you come from.

Q: Is there a river in the U.S. or somewhere closer that you have a connection with?

AS: I'm an ocean person now. I made sure that I find a husband who knows how to drive a boat. He grew up fishing with his family here on the coast. I connect with the ocean. We go out fishing as a family a lot and spend time on the water. And yeah, I migrated and I'm trying to connect to this land. I respect it.

Q: Are there any projects coming up that you're really excited about?

AS: Yeah, I'm excited to dive more deeply into some samples from the Amazon River, and I have samples coming from the Congo River. So yeah, that’s next: to see what's happening in the biggest rivers on Earth.

*Rob Stenson and Anya Suslova sampling the Santuit River in Mashpee, MA in June 2018. Photo by Alexander Nassikas*

Q: Science on the Fly works with volunteer community scientists around the world, which is how you started out. Can you speak to the value of that community science, to the person who's out there paying attention to their home river?

AS: Well, there's a huge value in continuous river monitoring because once you go out and sample once, that doesn't tell you much. It's prohibitively expensive for a scientist to go to a site and sample once a week for years, that would be impossible to do. But volunteers who do live next to a river, who go there to fish, to get their spiritual strength from the river and connect with the river; they are already there. They're doing the biggest work that would be impossible for scientists to do. For us, what they're doing is actually huge.

If they sample for a year and they stop sampling, that's a reference point. We'll preserve the data, we'll put it in the archive. And a hundred years from now, if someone wants to see how the river changed, it's there. So they contribute to this long archive of knowledge that will hopefully be there forever for anyone to use.

*Anya Suslova, Max Holmes and Joe Mangiafico taking water samples from the Kwethluk River. Photo by John Land Le Coq*

Rivers around the world tell us not only the story of the environmental change, you see the signal of this global change, but there are a lot of rivers that tell the story of what's happening right now and what people are doing that are living in these communities.

I want everyone to feel empowered that they can contribute so much to science, and maybe it doesn't feel like the collective water sample makes a difference, but just thinking like you are contributing to this library of data that will be there forever. And people don't think of it like that, but that's a data point. If they don't collect it, nobody will collect it and it will not be there in the world.

Q: What does that feel like to look back at that girl on the river when you were 13?

AS: Sometimes I feel like it's surreal. I can't believe that this is happening to me. When I think back of myself, of where I saw myself ending up, it definitely wasn't here. I never imagined that this is where my life would take me. It's fantastic what curiosity and persistence can do. And I think I was just also really lucky in life.

Q: You have a little 2-year-old. How has that changed your connection to this work?

AS: It made me more, I guess, involved in local science, just thinking about clean environment here, because I want to make sure he grows up in a clean environment. I want it for the world. I feel like I'm more involved now than I was before because I know this is where my family is. I am making sure that I do my best so that he can enjoy the same and see the same beauty that I was so lucky to see and experience.

Q: What does it mean to you to protect our home for future generations?

AS: Finding what you enjoy doing. I think being happy in life is so important to set an example for future generations. So find what you're good at, but have a goal of contributing positively to society and environment. That's what I'm trying to do.

Q: You're a mother, you called the Lena River a mother. What does it mean to be a mother in this world that we're living in that is changing?

AS: Well, it's important to take care of your children and make sure that they have a good life. That's what rivers do for us. They clean, always take it out. They renew. There's always renew, recycle, and they take away. You feel sad and sit by a river, and it takes it away, it helps. So there's this selflessness, that's what I learned from being a mother. It's the first time in my life where I put another person's feelings and well-being before mine. For me, that's so important. And so mothers are incredibly generous like that. And so the rivers are incredibly generous. We pollute them. We do so much harm to them, and they just take it away. They just take care of us and provide.

Thank you to all of our scientists and community members who have joined us to tell the story of your home rivers. Because at the end of the day, when you protect a river, you protect the whole system—including the people in it.

Here’s to 5 amazing years of Science on the Fly—let’s kickstart the next 5 now during our celebration!