Early investigations of permafrost in Siberia by Baltic-German and German scientists

• Main Authors: Fritzsche, Diedrich, Tammiksaar, Erki
• Format: Conference Object
• Language: unknown
• Published: IPA 2016
• Subjects: permafrost; Yakutsk; Siberia
• Online Access: https://epic.awi.de/id/eprint/41188/; https://epic.awi.de/id/eprint/41188/1/ICOP_Poster.pdf; https://hdl.handle.net/10013/epic.48130; https://hdl.handle.net/10013/epic.48130.d001

In the 18th and 19th century several German and Baltic-German scientists investigated almost unknown territories of the Russian Empire. Many of them were invited by the Russian Imperators and some became academicians of the St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences,and later had considerable influence on the development of science in Russia in general and on the organization of expeditions to the Far East and Siberia in particular. German naturalists like Georg Wilhelm Steller (1709-1746), Johann Georg Gmelin (1709-1755), Peter Simon Pallas (1741-1811), Karl Ernst von Baer (1792-1876), Ferdinand von Wrangell (1797-1870) and Alexander Theodor von Middendorff (1815-1894) traveled through Siberia collecting information about flora, fauna, geology, climate, ethnology,history and economy of the Far East of Russia. Their results were published in Russian, German and French,mostly in journals of the Russian Geographical Society (St. Petersburg), in travelogues or in separate monographs and book-chapters. Results of investigations of the Russian Empire became available in Europe by special scientific journals edited e.g. by P.S. Pallas, J.G. Georgi, Th. Fr. Ehrmann, A. Erman, K.E. v. Baer and G. v. Helmersen. The western world was first informed about frozen ground in Siberia by J. G. Gmelin, who reported finding the phenomenon in Yakutsk, but Leopold von Buch (1774-1853) doubted his report and argued that plants were growing in this region, which considered impossible on permanently frozen ground. As a result, he demanded that Gmelin’s data be removed from scientific textbooks [1]. On behalf of a merchant of the Russian-American Company, Fedor Shergin, a shaft was dug in Yakutsk to get drinking water. To Shergi’s surprise he was unable to reach liquid water, but the governor of the Russian- American Company, Ferdinand von Wrangell, requested him to continue digging at the expense of the Company, for studies of the frozen ground underneath Yakutsk. The sinking of the well, starting in 1828, has been continued until 1837 ...