Yedoma. Part 1. Annals of geocryological research in the XIX-XX centuries

Abstract

The subject of the study is the yedoma i.e. perennially frozen organic-bearing ("1–2% of Corg) and ice-rich (containing 50–90 vol. % of excess ice) silty, sandy loam and fine sand deposit of Late Pleistocene age. Yedoma with multi-stages syngenetic ice wedges (up to 15–20 meters high and up to 3.5 m wide) aged from 11.7 to 50 cal. ca BP often saturated with rock debris and gravel inclusions in intermountain basins and river deltas. The most famous regions of the Siberia, where yedoma is widespread, are the Kolyma and Yana-Indigirka lowlands, the New Siberian Islands, Lena and Vilyui River valley, Lena-Anabar, Anabar-Khatanga and Magadan regions, Yamal, Gydan and Taimyr Peninsula, Olekma, Biryusa valleys. In Alaska, these are slump on the Itkillik River and the Fox Permafrost Tunnel. Yedoma of the Klondike are known in the Yukon. Sections with large ground ice in yedoma were first described in the early 19th century on the Alaska and the New Siberian Islands, the idea of syngenetic accumulation of permafrost arose in the late 19th - early 20th centuries, the mechanism of syngenetic formation of yedoma was described in the middle of the 20th century. In the end of 20th century, studies of yedoma reached a new level. The oxygen and deuterium stable isotopes study of ice wedges together with radiocarbon ages of ice wedges gave the possibility to reconstruct the winter paleotemperature during yedoma formation. It was established the different genesis of yedoma also.