COMMISSION HISTORY

Paleopedology is devoted to recording and interpreting the records of past soil formations.  When Liu Tungsheng (China) presented in 1961 at the 6th INQUA Congress in Warsaw, Poland the detailed Quaternary loess-paleosol sequences in China, this caused quite a stir and also resulted in increased interest in paleosols in Europe and America.  An International Paleopedology Commission was established as an INQUA Commission in 1965 at the 7th INQUA Congress in Boulder, Colorado, USA, following a proposal by Dan Yaalon (Israel).  Academician I. P. Gerasimov (Russia) was selected to be the first President. 

Multidisciplinary nature of paleopedology stimulated the ways of its broader identification in the system of environmental sciences. And during the 9th International Congress of Soil Science, 1968, Adelaide, Australia, the Commission has been affiliated to the Soil Genesis, Classification and Cartography Commission of the International Society of Soil Science. 

The President of Commission had no appointed or selected colleagues by that time. The position of the President was considered sufficient as it involved mainly making paleopedology a respected topic by sponsoring a thematic meeting during the next congress and corresponding by airmail with relevant colleagues. The main focus of Commission activities was organizing special paleopedology sessions during the INQUA, and later also Soil Science Congresses. 

President R.V. Ruhe (USA) replaced I.P Gerasimov after 8th INQUA Congress in Paris 1969. At that time the dating of humus and soil organic matter by 14C became more prevalent and of greater interest also in the paleosol context for the ISSS. A turning point in activity was when Prof F. A. van Baren, then ISSS Secretary General obtained funds from UNESCO to organize a 1970 international meeting in Amsterdam dealing with the age of soils and parent materials and asked Dan Yaalon to edit and publish the proceedings. This was done by 1971 and the volume Paleopedology: Origin, Nature and Dating of Paleosols was published (Jerusalem, 1971). It is now also on the website of the Paleopedology Commissio. 

Dan H. Yaalon (Israel) was elected as a President in 1977 during the 10th INQUA Congress in Birmingham. Position of vice-President and a secretary was then formally recognized (in line with INQUA statutes and bye laws). So the board of Commission officers became similar to its present status. For the period of 10 years (1977 – 1987) it consisted of Dan H. Yaalon as a President, J.B. Dalrymple as a Vice-President, and K.W.C. Valentine as a Secretary. Dan Yaalon recalls: - “There certainly was no treasurer because no funding was involved. We just needed willing people to spend a lot or some of their time (and postal expenses) on these things”. A first set of working groups were established by that time, to cover specific activities within Commission:

• On register paleosols (Chairman G.C. Beckmann); 

• German working group on paleopedology (Chaiman Helmut E. Stremme). 

Proceedings of the INQUA Congress in Ottawa, Canada, 1987 were published in a Special Issue of Geoderma, v.45, issue 2, 1989.

Commission started to produce Newsletters. K.W.C. Valentine compiled first 5 issues, distributed by mail. Mailing list of 118 members was also published in Newsletters. International standard serial number was obtained: ISSN 0256- 2340, that was later forgotten.

Dan Yaalon started to seek collaborators for compiling small-scale paleopedological maps of the Continents, starting as a first stage with the map for the LGM period of 18,000 years BP. This idea was then partially realized in the scope of PAGES initiatives. 

The next board (1987 - 1995) of officers was elected during the 12th INQUA Congress in Ottawa, Canada (1987) with John A. Catt (UK) as a President, Dan H. Yaalon (Israel) as a Vice-President and Leon R. Follmer (USA) as a Secretary-treasurer. The position of a secretary-treasurer was formally recognized within INQUA because all Commissions were receiving limited support from the INQUA Executive Committee, mainly to cover printing and mailing expenses for their Newsletters.

5 Newsletters (numbers 6-11) were produced and distributed by mail. A selection from these newsletters are available on Commission web site.

A significant and well attended event was the II International Symposium and Field Workshop on Paleopedology in 1993 in Champaign, Illinois, organized by Leon Follmer and Don Johnson (transactions published in 1998 in Quaternary International Vol. 51/52) which was devoted to wide ranging discussions to many topics of both Quaternary and pre-Quaternary paleosols and surface paleosols as well. Paleopedology Glossary, prepared by John A. Catt (UK) was approved during that meeting and later published in Newsletter 14 (1998). It is now available on Commission web site.

New working groups were established at this Conference:

• Definitions, used in Paleopedology (Paleopedology Glossary), Chairman J.A. Catt, UK

• Classification of Paleosols, Chairman W.D. Nettleton, USA

• Methods of field and laboratory study of Paleosols, Chairman R. Kemp, Great Britain

• Pedostratigraphy, Chairman R.B. Morrison, USA

• Diagenesis of paleosols, Chairman B. Van Vliet-Lanoe, France

•  Alluvial pedogenesis, Chairman Whitney Autin, USA 

• Paleosols and Paleoclimatic Change in Eastern and Central Asia , Chairman X.M. Fang, China

• Geoarchaeology, Chairman E. A. Bettis, USA. 

The Conference was supplemented by field trip (that then became a tradition for paleopedology meetings), covering 5 States of the Middle West with a route over 4,000 km. An excellent guide-book provided thorough explanations on numerous Quaternary and pre-Quaternary paleosols, visited by Conference participants. 

John A Catt 

Photo courtesy: A. Makeev

Arnt Bronger 

Photo courtesy: A. Makeev

The next board of Commission officers was elected at the 14th INQUA Congress in Berlin, 1995. It served for two inter-Congress period (1995-2003) with Arnt Bronger (Germany) as a President, John A. Catt (UK) as a Vice President and Alexander O. Makeev (Russia) as a Secretary-treasurer. Two additional working groups were requested by the members and approved at the Commission business meeting in Berlin:

• Geopedology of Soils in China, Chairman Lu Jinggang, P.R. China

• Inter-American group on Paleopedology, Chairmen M. Singer and R.B. Morrison, USA.

The idea of working groups thought to be very productive by that time. But later it became obvious that working groups remained mostly inactive, being narrow focused, while the members tend to have broader interests, working alternatively in different areas. In the course of a few years Commission working groups terminated.

An Internet era started during that period. Commission web site was launched in 1995 on the facilities of Moscow State University, supported by Alexander Makeev. 8 Newsletters were issued and distributed both by mail and electronic mailing list of 450 members. Newsletters are still available on Commission website.

Commission continued to organize special sessions on International Congresses of INQUA and IUSS. Besides this, four International Symposia and Field Workshops on Paleopedology have been conducted: Third – in Rauischholzhausen, Germany, 1997; fourth in Lanzhou, P.R. China, 1998; Fifth in Suzdal, Russia, 2000; Sixth in Mexico-city, 2001. The reports of these meetings are available on Commission web site.

Proceedings of these meetings were published in the following journals:

• Special issue of Catena “Reconstruction and climatic implications of paleosols” (Volume 34 nos 1-2, 1998);

• Supplement 1 of Chinese Science bulletin “Climatic change: paleopedological and soil rock magnetic approaches”, v. 44, 1999;

The next board of Commission officers was elected at the 16th INQUA Congress in Reno, Nevada, USA in 2003 and served for the period of 2003-2010 with Edoardo Costantini (Italy) as President, Alexander O. Makeev (Russia) as Vice-President and Francesco Malucelli (Italy) as a Secretary.

One Newsletter was produced and replaced by posting the news on electronic Commission forum. Starting from 2010 Commission decided to continue producing Newsletters on the regular basis besides news and other posts in electronic forum.

Besides paleopedology sessions during the INQUA and IUSS Congresses two International Symposia and Field Workshops on Paleopedology have been conducted in Florence, Italy (2004) and Chennai, India, 2008. Proceedings of Symposium in Florence have been published in a special issue of Quaternary International, v. 156-157 (2006) and papers of the paleopedology Symposium during the INQUA Congress in Cairns, Australia – in a special issue of Quaternary International, v.209, issues 1-2 (2009).

 At this time, the Commission realized that a new push to Paleopedology should only could given by the international recognition given by funded projects. Some attempts have been tried and, aimed at increasing the opportunities of a wider involvement of Paleopedology within environmental focused projects, join meetings with other Societies (EGU, INQUA) and IUSS Commissions were launched. 

Daniela Sauer

Photo courtesy: A. Makeev

Edoardo Constantini

Photo courtesy: A. Makeev

At the World Soil Congress in Rio-de-Janeiro, Brazil, 2018, the new Board of Paleopedology Commission officers was elected: Maria Bronnikova as chair, Elizabeth Solleiro-Rebolledo as vice-chair, Tobias Sprafke as secretary and Danny Itkin as editor of the Newsletter. Maria Bronnikova and Elizabeth Solleiro Rebolledo were re-elected, Fatima Kurbanova became new secretary of the Commission and Lilit Pogosyan was given responsibilities of the Newsletter editor during the 21st World Soil Congress in Glasgow till 2026.

The regular Commission activities for 2018 – 2022 included:

• Paleopedology sessions during the World Congresses; 

Due to the efforts of Commission members, the Paleopedology courses are included in the bachelor’s and master’s programs in Moscow (Alexander Makeev and Elya Zazovskya), Saint-Petersburg (Alexey Rusakov) and Kazan (Natalia Kovaleva) Universities. They were performed in the University of Wurzburg, Germany in 2014 and 2017 (Birgit Terhorst and Alexander Makeev) and the University of Campinas, Brazil in 2015 (Francisco Ladeira and Alexander Makeev). 

Paleopedology is experiencing such rapid development that latest approaches, methods and ideas often remains beyond the scope in University programs. For this reason, the Commission supported the initiative to organize summer schools for young scholars. Geochronology summer school, organized by Markus Egli was first held in Switzerland in 2009. Since that time and up to present, they are organized annually. Paleopedology summer school, organized by Maria Dergacheva and Alexander Makeev was first held in Altai Region, Western Siberia, Russia in 2010. Until 2019, 10 schools were held. Summer schools on Paleopedology was held in Wurzburg, organized by Birgit Terhorst and Alexander Makeev in 2014 and 2018.

In addition to these schools, paleopedology schools were organized within the framework of various events, such as the Congress of the Dokuchaev Soil Science Society (Belgorod, Russia, 2016) and the Symposium of the INQUA Working Group Peribaltic (Petrozavodsk, Karelia, Russia, 2018). In 2021 an online course with 13 lectures on paleopedology and geoarchaeology were presented on the platform of the Institute of Geography, Russian Academy of Sciences. The lectures are available on YouTube channel (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j2hH). 

Thus, with a well-defined conceptual framework and the goal of dealing with and interpreting both buried and unburied paleosols in space and geologic time, including the most recent impacts on soils due to human intervention, the Paleopedology Commission is now an integral and active part of both IUSS, INQUA and EGU with a current membership of over 350 researchers on its web site all over the world and organizing regular thematic symposia at congresses and meetings at both these organizations. Though cooperation or formal association with IUGS is still subject to improvements and this is considered as a priority of Commission activities for the future. 

M. Dergacheva

Photo courtesy: A. Makeev