Wrangel Island
Iceland
Svalbard
India
Far Eastern Russia
Little Diomede Island
Ellesmere Island
Kamchatka
Cosmogenic Isotope
Research
Quaternary Research
Center
The Extent and Chronology of Pleistocene Glaciations in Kamchatka, Russia
Our home for one snowy night in the Sharomskaya valley, central Kamchatka
Principal Investigators
Dr. Lyn Gualtieri, Quaternary Research Center, University of Washingtonlyn4@u.washington.edu
Dr. Oxana Savoskul, Institute of Geography, Russian Academy of Sciences
Oxana and Lyn on a glacial erratic boulder in the Adrianovka valley
Funding
American Association for the Advancement of ScienceProject Summary
This project strives to investigate the nature, extent and chronology of Quaternary glaciations in Kamchatka. With the exception of a few radiocarbon age estimates, insufficient data are available for realistically assessing the numerical age of past glaciations. The main objectives of our research are to reconstruct former glaciations through mapping and to obtain a robust chronology using cosmogenic isotopes, lichenometry and radiocarbon. The new data will allow for the reconstruction of paleoenvironmental histories that can be compared with other regional chronologies, paleoenvironmental records and marine stratigraphies of the North Pacific.The 2001 Field Season
The Moraines
The Moraines
A Holocene cirque and associated moraines
The supposed LGM-age Esso "B" moraine was sampled for cosmogenic isotope dating
Erratic boulders were difficult to find on forested moraines such as this one in the Topolovaya valley
But we did manage to find some boulders on moraines that had experienced forest fires
Yura samples a rather hard erratic boulder
Oxana carefully samples the upper few centimeters of a quartz-rich erratic
Other components of fieldwork
Our home base at the Volcanological Institute, Petropavlovsk-Kamchatskiy
The transportation of choice in central Kamchatka is a tank
Our tank driver's name is Fyodor. Fyodor told me that I was the first American woman ever to ride in his tank!
The tank helped to flatten out the trees on a heavily forested moraine for our campsite
When we weren't camping we stayed at the Kamchatka Ecological Center in Esso.
Sasha and Yura (in the middle) helped us out with the fieldwork
Lunch break
Everyone says the fish are big in Kamchatka. It's true!
Early September snow
The following talk was presented at the AAAS annual meeting in Boston (February 2002)
Gualtieri, L., and Savoskul, O. The Extent and Chronology of Quaternary Glaciations on Kamchatka, Russia. Check out this article in the May 31, 2002 issue of Science
Science articleLinks
Quaternary Research Center, University of WashingtonKamchatka Scientific Center, Far Eastern Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences