THE EARTH'S PERMAFROST BEDS. PERMAFROST AND ANCIENT GLACIATION

• Main Authors: Grave,N. A., Gerasimov,I. P., Markov,K. K.
• Other Authors: DIRECTORATE OF SCIENTIFIC INFORMATION SERVICES OTTAWA (ONTARIO)
• Format: Text
• Language: English
• Published: 1968
• Subjects: Snow; Ice and Permafrost; (*PERMAFROST; EARTH(PLANET)); GLACIERS; SEA ICE; TERRAIN; LITHOSPHERE; CLIMATE; USSR; TRANSLATIONS; Peary; Peary Land; Ice; Ice Sheet; permafrost; Sea ice; Siberia
• Online Access: http://www.dtic.mil/docs/citations/AD0674730; http://oai.dtic.mil/oai/oai?&verb=getRecord&metadataPrefix=html&identifier=AD0674730

The phenomenon of deep permafrost is intimately related to that of the Siberian relict permafrost, that is, permafrost surviving from the Ice Age. For this reason the translator has supplemented Grave's paper by the excerpt from Gerasimov and Markov, which is a classic description of relict permafrost. In Gerasimov and Markov there is also an interesting statement of the thesis (most strongly put forward, in the USSR, by V.N. Saks) that relict permafrost and glaciation are antagonistic, mutually exclusive. Wherever the ground was protected by an ice-sheet from the atmospheric cold of the Ice Age, it did not deeply freeze. The wide-spread relict permafrost of Siberia is therefore taken as proof that most of Siberia was not glaciated, except for mountain glaciation, during the Ice Age or at least during the most recent glacial stages. There was no lack of cold in Ice Age Siberia, but there was evidently a lack of precipitation, as in Peary Land today; the result was deep ground freezing but no ice-sheet. Trans. of Priroda (USSR) n1 p46-53 1968 and Akademiya Nauk SSSR. Institut Geografii. Trudy, n33 p35-44 1939, by E. R. Hope.