Mark Ilijch Neustadt, An Outstanding Palynologist and Palaeogeographer, Researcher of Peatlands and Lakes of Eurasia (1903–1985)

• Main Author: ŻUREK, Sławomir
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: Polish
• Published: Polska Akademia Umiejętności 2013
• Subjects: anthro-bio; geo; Kamchatka Peninsula; Kamchatka; Siberia
• Online Access: https://bibliotekanauki.pl/articles/520493.pdf; https://bibliotekanauki.pl/articles/520493

Mark Neustadt was born in 1903 in Nevel, in the vicinity of Vitebsk. He studied geobotany at the Moscow State University. In the years 1925–1948, he worked at the Central Peat Bog Experimental Station in Moscow. His initial research covered several great peatlands and two lakes in the Pierieslav Region. He discovered an islet on Lake Somino (in 1926) on which Holocene peat (0,5 m) and gytt ja (39,5 m) reached the highest thickness in the world, i.e. 40 m. In 1949, he performed a coring reaching 38 m by means of a manual Hiller’s corer. The profi le was comprehensively analysed (pollen analyses, 14C datings, diatom analysis, palaeozoological analyses of gytt ja). In the early 1930’s, in the scope of an expedition, he studied a number of peatlands of the Kamchatka Peninsula, discovering inserts of ash in peats, and becoming one of the fi rst creators of a new fi eld of knowledge – tephrochronology. He also conducted studies on the raised bogs of the southern part of West Siberia. Already in his early works, beginning from 1926, he applied pollen analysis dating peats and gytt jas. In 1948, he moved to the Institute of Geography of the Russian Academy of Sciences, where he acted as scientifi c director for 13 years, and a consultant after retiring. In a number of his works, he developed his patt ern of palaeogeographical changes after the last glaciation in Russia and Europe, based on research on peatlands and lakes. He correlated the beginning of the Holocene with the oldest sediments of modern peatlands and lakes, i.e. those from 12 thousand years ago. In his professorial (doctoral) dissertation, issued in 1957 (400 pages), based on 156 pollen diagrams (27 own diagrams), he distinguished 26 geographical types of pollen diagrams. He discussed the history of trees in the Holocene: Older (9.5–12 thousand years ago), Early (7.0–9.5 thousand years ago), Middle (2.5–7.0 thousand years ago), and Late (0–2.5 thousand years ago), as well as changes of climatic -vegetation zones during that time. He simultaneously ...