Home – Home – Jornals – Advanced Search

Lacustrine sediments, related subaerial aeolian sands, as well as fluvioglacial sands enclosed in ablation moraines in the Chuya River valley between the Chuya and Kurai basins in Gorny Altai, have been dated by optically stimulated (OSL) and infrared stimulated (IRSL) luminescence. The OSL and IRSL dates indicate that the formation of the lake, which spread into the Chuya Basin, was caused by the Sukor rockslide that dammed the Chuya valley. The rockslide was triggered by a large earthquake (shaking intensity at least 9-10) generated by an active fault in the Kurai Fault Zone about 16 ka, which is the oldest known date for its activity. Thus, large landslides or rockslides can remain geomorphically expressed for at least 16 ka in the climate and landscape conditions as in the Chuya and Kurai basins. The lake existed till ~10 ka BP and then was gradually drained. The Kuyuktanar glacier reached its greatest extent in the early marine isotope stage (MIS) 2, and its ablation moraines formed about 25 ka. Judging by the age and good preservation of moraines left by the glacier, the hilly terrain in the area of the Sukor rockslide, and the presence of lacustrine sands in the vicinity of the lake dam, no catastrophic flooding events in the Chuya and Katun valleys have occurred since the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM; ~20 kyr BP). The water table of the glacier-dammed lake that occupied the Kurai Basin around the LGM could not have exceeded 1750 m above sea level (a.s.l.). Higher lake terraces traceable till elevations of 2100-2200 m a.s.l. should be attributed to more ancient lake stages. Archaeological sites in the area of the junction between the Chuya and Kurai basins were formed in the post-lake period, the oldest dating back to the latest Late Paleolithic time.

The article analyzes the expedition organized by Evgeny Andreevich Ashchepkov, well-known specialist in folk architecture, to study the Russian population architecture in Kamenskoe Priobye of the Altai Region. The authors state that it has never been a research object, moreover there is unreliable information in scientific literature. The study’s main sources are the documents of E.A. Ashchepkov’s personal archive in Novosibirsk Regional State Archive. The research relevance is determined by the fact that the field materials collected by E.A. Ashchepkov are little used in his summarizing monograph on Altai, and are still not in demand by other investigators of old-timer culture of the Russian population. Therefore, the research objectives and tasks are focused on revealing the terms and routes of expedition; analyzing the sources kept in Novosibirsk Regional State Archive to determine their potential for studying traditional culture of Russian Siberians. Using reconstruction and biographical methods, the authors managed to identify the terms of expedition - August of 1944, and reconstruct the route of his field research. The article describes the main ways of recording the information (black and white pencil sketching with further drawing in color, photographic recording, charting). E.A. Ashchepkov’s professionalism as an architect contributed to fixing multicultural information, not limited by architecture only. That, on the one hand, makes this information available to different social-humanitarian specialists, especially ethnographers, art historians and cultural studies scholars; on the other hand, due to notes left under the materials, it is possible to suppose that the geographical frames of his «personal» field voyages were much wider and included other regions of Altai Region and the Republic of Altai. The authors conclude that the revealed unpublished expedition materials make it possible to better understand both folk architecture, and other household traditions of old-time residents of forest steppe in Kamenskoe Priobie as well. The expedition materials concerning the territories bordering on the Altai Region allow reaching the comparative level of local variants of Russian Siberians’ culture under different geographical and ethnic-cultural conditions.

The work objective is to characterize the image of the ferret in the Buryat traditional culture. Its novelty is determined by the lack of research on this topic in Russian ethnography. The study is based on written and field sources and carried out with a structural-semiotic and comparative methods. The paper’s first section provides a general description of the ferret image in the Buryat traditional culture. It shows this animal’s place in the folk zooclassification, reveals its utilitarian use. Lexical data from languages of Buryat and northern Inner Asia peoples indicate the general Mongolian origin of the Buryat names of the ferret. The article pays attention to the edibility criterion of this animal; notes that the Buryat vocabulary and folklore reflect the ferret’s main biological characteristics. The work’s second section examines the ferret image in the Buryat folklore and rituals. There is an interchangeability of the images of the ferret and Siberian weasel in the Buryat epic. The ferret is associated with the motif of werewolf, which manifests itself in the plot of the cultural hero’s successive reincarnation into different representatives of the marten family. In general, a predominantly negative connotation of this predatory animal is revealed in the Buryat vocabulary and folklore. This animal’s positive connotation, its sacralization can be traced in the Buryat traditional shamanic rituals. Ferret fetishes are credited with a function of a shaman’s assistant spirit, a guide to other worlds. In the Buryat family ritual they act as a talisman for family members, primarily for children, they are also endowed with a therapeutic function. The author concludes that the ferret image has an ambiguous characteristics in the traditional Buryat culture.

The data on the ground temperature up to the depth of 650 m in a well with a restored thermal regime have been obtained for the first time for the Lena-Aldan interfluve. The abnormal permafrost thickness for this territory (750-780 m) has been determined by geothermal measurements. The change of ground temperature with depth displays the nonstationary contemporary regime of permafrost with the negative geothermal gradient up to a depth of 300 m. The permafrost thickness has been estimated and the possible reasons of its difference in relatively nearby areas are considered.

Temperature monitoring of permafrost near underground oil pipelines allow estimating a permafrost thawing depth under structures, predicting the soil temperature over time and predicting the time of emergency, in case the latter one will occur in the future. Permafrost temperature monitoring is carried out in close proximity to the oil pipeline and at depths below the bottom of the layer of seasonal temperature fluctuations. The results of monitoring are processed according to the methodology described in the article.

The results of experimental studies of the tangential frost heaving forces of clay and sandy soils in laboratory conditions on three installations with different single-plane shear rates at constant normal load are presented. The installations made it possible to perform conditionally instantaneous shift, long-term tests with the application of a stepwise shifting load and a shift at a constant speed. As a result of complex studies, the dependences of shear resistance or equivalent tangential forces of frost heaving of sand and loam on water content (from 10 to 28 %) and temperature (from 0 to -10 °C) on the metal surface have been established. An increase in soil water content and a decrease in soil temperature leads to an increase in the resistance to soil shear. The shear resistance of sand is up to 2 times higher than similar values for loam under identical shear conditions, temperature and water content. An increase in soil moisture leads to an increase in the contact area of soil particles through ice layers with a metal foundation and to an increase in the bonds between the particles as a result of an increase in the volume of ice. It is established that the resistance to conditionally instantaneous shear is up to 3 times higher than the values of extremely long-term shear resistance and shear at a constant speed under similar thermal humidity conditions.

The article provides analytical review of existing approaches and specific models for solving problems of freezing, thawing and frost heaving of soils. The authors analyzed about 100 published works of Russian and 100 works of foreign authors, including articles, monographs, dissertations, patents, conference proceedings, scientific reports. Special attention in the analysis of the physical formulation of mathematical models is paid to taking into account the mechanism of heat and mass transfer, ice segregation, phase transitions of pore water, the formation of deformations and forces of frost heaving of frozen soils.

The analysis of differences in the structure of drifting ice ridges and ice ridges in the landfast ice was carried out on the basis of information obtained during research work done by the Arctic and Antarctic Research Institute in 2007-2019 in the Kara and Laptev Seas. The studies were carried out using thermal water drilling with logger recording of the penetration rate. The main attention was focused on the distribution of ice ridge porosity and the thickness of the consolidated layer. The unconsolidated part of the ice ridge keel and its compaction in the process of ice ridge formation under the action of the Archimedes force were considered. It was revealed that the ice ridges in the landfast ice differed from drifting ice ridges in their somewhat smaller geometric dimensions, but in steeper sail and keel slopes, as well as in a different keel/sail ratio (3.1 versus 3.6). In the landfast ice ridges the porosity of the unconsolidated part of the keel was lower than in drifting ice ridges (by 6 % on average). It was confirmed that the gradual decrease in the porosity of the unconsolidated part of the keel of the ice ridges in the landfast ice was caused by the under-ice currents.

The last catastrophic debris flow disaster took place in Tajikistan in the Barsemdara River valley in 2015. The aim of this study was to apply chain modeling to consider debris flow characteristics of 2015 year. This approach has also been applied to assess potential flood prone zones for future debris flows. To consider the characteristics of debris flow in the source, the transport-shift model, developed by Yu.B. Vinogradov was applied. Based on this model, debris flow hydrographs were obtained and used as input data for valley zoning based on the FLO-2D model. So, for scenario I, the debris flow discharge of the forward wave was used as the input hydrograph (maximum -1630 m³/s), the II scenario - the debris flow discharge at the source outlet (maximum 650 m³/s). The digital elevation model ALOS PALSAR (12.5 m) was used as the relief data. Since there are no rheological data, the modeling was carried out using several sets of parameters. The simulated debris flow discharges based on the most realistic option for I scenario varied from 1494 to 2860 m³/s for individual waves. Additionally, the authors carried out modeling using digital elevation model from an unmanned aerial vehicle obtained during the survey in 2019. The results showed that the considered approach makes it possible to estimate the boundaries of both actual and potential flood prone zones.

This paper has described the role and contribution of P.I. Melnikov, Academician of the USSR Academy of Sciences; N.A. Tsytovich, Corresponding Member of the USSR Academy of Sciences; N.I. Saltykov, Professor, and V.F. Zhukov, Candidate of Technical Sciences, to construction of the Yakutsk Combined Heat and Power Plant. These outstanding figures known for their pioneering researches in different fields of permafrost science and engineering were actively and directly involved in the construction project, including the planning and design, foundation analysis, site investigation, foundation construction, and post-construction monitoring. The foundation condition at the plant site, the causes for talik development and the dynamics of talik distribution during the period of authors’ observations have been discussed. The reasons of the quite stable state of all the plant’s facilities despite the widespread talik occurrence have been adduced.