Twenty international students who just completed a five-week research trip to Siberia's Lake Baikal will spend the next month in the Lake Tahoe basin in the 10th year of a unique environmental-exchange program. Each summer, the Tahoe-Baikal Institute enables students to spend 10 weeks exploring ecology and limnology (the scientific study of fresh waters), environmental restoration, resource economics, public policy and other fields at two of the world's most unusual freshwater lakes. The institute, a nonprofit organization established to help preserve Lake Tahoe and Lake Baikal, is co-sponsored by the UC Davis Tahoe Research Group and others, including the League to Save Lake Tahoe and the California Tahoe Conservancy. Institute students come primarily from Russia and the United States; this year, students from Armenia and the Czech Republic are also participating. Students in the program are likely to "become wise stewards of their countries' limited water and terrestrial resources," says Charles Goldman, director of the UC Davis Tahoe Research Group. Working at Tahoe and Baikal offers students an opportunity to compare two very different lakes, both renowned for their exceptional clarity and both threatened by human activities, says institute program coordinator Silke Roever.