V International Conference on Cryopedology

[Alexander Makeev]

DIVERSITY OF FROST-AFFECTED SOILS
AND THEIR ROLE IN ECOSYSTEMS

September 14-20, 2009, Ulan-Ude, Buryatia, Russia

Specialists in northern soils had international contacts for several
decades. However, the First International Conference on Cryopedology
was held only 10 years ago - in November, 1992 in Pushchino, Russia.
On that meeting the group of soil scientists soils from different
countries - USA (R.Arnold, J.Kimble, R.Ahrens, C.-L.Ping, J.Brown),
Canada (C.Tarnocai, S.Smith), Denmark (B.Jakobsen), Germany (G.Broll,
E.M.Pfeiffer) and Russia (I.Sokolov, V.Targulian, E.Naumov,
D.Gilichinsky) decided to organize the Cryosol Working Group both at
International Society of Soil Science (ISSS, now IUSS) and
International Permafrost Association (IPA), mainly to develop the new
classification units for permafrost-affected soils and Northern
Circumpolar Soil Database with series of maps. Now the Cryosol Working
Group is very active team of polar soil scientists from Canada, China,
Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, New Zealand, Norway, Poland, Russia
and USA. The information on the members of the group is here.
Every year the CWG has several meetings to discuss different
activities. Every 4-5 years the group organizes the International
Conferences on
Cryopedology. The last one was held in August, 2005 in ARKHANGELSK,
Russia. The next will be held in 2009 in Baikal region, city Ulan-Ude,
Russia.
Cryosol Working Group developed the diagnostics and taxonomy of
permafrost-affected soils for the World Reference Base for Soil
Resources and for the US Soil Taxonomy. It also completed the first
version of the Northern Circumpolar Soil Database. In 2004 the Cryosol
book was published. Besides classification and databases, CWG is also
focused on the role of cryogenesis in the soil formation, the
ecological problems relevant to northern soils and the consequences of
the global climate change for polar soils.
Additional information is available at: http://www.ib.komisc.ru/add/cryosol_wg/index.html.