Haskell Indian Nations University and Kansas University are continuing work to help indigenous tribes in Siberian Russia with a water-quality project.

Students and professors from the two Kansas universities and Northern Arizona University are part of an exchange program that’s been going on for about five years.

The exchange will last for about four weeks with people scheduled to have left the United States on Monday. Grants from the National Science Foundation and the U.S. Agency for International Development are funding the exchanges. Some students also have some independent funding.

“We’re going to have about 10 people going,” said Cynthia Annett, who began the exchange program with a grant from the U.S. Agency of International Development in 1999. “This is going to be probably our biggest exchange yet. It’s a complicated exchange for us, though, because we are going to have three or four different projects going on.”

While the exchange began with monitoring the water quality of the streams in the remote Altai Republic of Siberian Russia, it has continued to grow and add programs.

This year, the exchange includes a program to address cultural similarities and differences in music.

“We’re carrying over a dulcimer from the Ozark Folk Center in Arkansas,” Annett said. “It turns out a lot of folk music has origins that stem from this area.”

In addition to the music culture program, people with the exchange also will continue the water-monitoring project and also monitor birds and animals in the area.

Heidi Mehl, a KU graduate student, said she will be setting up her graduate project while in Gorno-Altaisk Siberia.

“I’m looking at the lake and the water quality and how it’s impacted by the development around the lake,” she said.

This is Mehl’s second exchange trip. Last year, she went as an undergraduate student studying ecology and evolutionary biology.

She considers the experience an amazing opportunity. This year, Mehl said, she hopes to gain a better understanding of everything contributing to the pollution in the area water supply.

“But it’s interesting because even though there’s pollution, the water is clean compared to some of our water supplies here,” Mehl said. “The area is in the early stages of development.”