Lake Chudsk (Peipus) and limnological research in Imperial Russia

Abstract

At the beginning of limnology, Lake Chudsk was entirely included in the Russian Empire. The first research answered the need to better understand and preserve fishery resources. Karl von Baer initiated the project in the 1850s. In the same years, research was carried out on the entire lake and its outfall, the Narva, in order to channel its energy while lowering the lake water level and then take advantage of its energetic potential. In the 1860s, the geologist Gregor von Helmersen wrote the first complete monograph of Lake Chudsk, but it was not until the 1895 campaign led by the geographer Joseph Spindler that the first bathymetric map of the lake was produced and the isothermal pattern of the temperature at all depths were plotted. Before Estonia became independent at the end of the First World War, most of the limnologists working on Lakes Chudsk and Pskov were German-Baltic scientists of Russian citizenship, favoring the encounter of several scientific cultures.