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Kubiëna Medal 2010 |
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Nicolas Fedoroff
The Kubiëna Medal is given for outstanding and sustained contribution in the discipline of soil micromorphology. It was introduced by Subcommission B - Soil Micromorphology of the ISSS to commemorate the memory of Walter L Kubiëna for his distinguished contribution to soil micromorphology. The 2010 recipient of the Kubiëna Medal is Nicolas Fedoroff. Nicolas Fedoroff will be receiving the Kubiena award at the 19th International World Congress of Soil Science next August in Brisbane for granting his achievements in Soil Micromorphology. Forty years of a dynamic engagement for promoting the discipline finds his roots in the childhood of Nicolas Fedoroff. During and after World War II, Nicolas was lucky to share the excitement of his aunt, Vera Malychev, a famous Russian Quaternary geologist, discovering the loess sections around Paris. No doubt that Vera, still fully impregnated by the Russian spirit of Soil Science, generated the curiosity of Nicolas for Soil History that is still fully alive sixty five years later. Conciliating the taste for research given by his aunt and the sense of reason ordered by his father he combined a background in Earth Sciences and Soil Science, and remained intimately convinced that the two disciplines should have never diverged. From the beginning of his career in the 1960s Nicolas initiated a pioneering research for integrating micromorphology to understand soil forming processes and history of Quaternary paleosols. Nick Fedoroff was a co-founder in 1969 of the International Working Group of Soil Micromorphology which provided an international standard for soil thin description. The efforts of this Working Group culminated in 1985 with the publication of the “Handbook for Soil Thin Description,” (Bullock et al, 1985) Nick being one of the principal authors. He also contributed for Soil Micromorphology chapters (e.g. Fedoroff and Courty, 1982) in soil science textbooks. The handbook not only promoted the systematic examination and interpretation of thin sections, but also succeeded to simplify the jargon of the discipline. Since that time Nick has been an active member of the International Working Group, including being one of the organizers of the very successful Working Meeting in Paris, in 1985, as well as a co-editor of the resulting proceedings (Fedoroff et al., 1987). His achievements in the field were prolific. He has given numerous guest lectures on Soil Micromorphology and Quaternary soils and landscapes throughout his career, including those at international conferences on the subject (Fedoroff, 1991). He has guided a large number of students from all over the globe, from tropics (e.g. Achyuthan and Fedoroff, 2008) to arctic (Bunting and Fedoroff, 1974), prairie to woodland, and arable to man-made soils. He has a large number of publications, many of which demonstrate the broad application of Soil Micromorphology to Pedology (e.g. Fedoroff and Eswaran, 1985) and paleopedology (e.g. Goldberg and Fedoroff, 1982), human impacts on soils, and archaeology (Courty and Fedoroff, 1982). Nick Fedoroff has investigated more particularly the linkage between illuviation processes, iron oxides and calcite accretion and climate factors (Fedoroff, 1997; Fedoroff et al., 1994; Fedoroff, 2003). Simply, the breadth and depth of his knowledge and approach in all aspects of the Earth sciences is unique and remarkable. The group developing soil micromorphology for archaeological soil and sediments has greatly benefitted from Nick’s stimulation and his fully open mind for accepting to view soil entities as highly sensitive reactors to climate and cultural factors. Nick Fedoroff has substantially contributed to the theoretical aspects of Paleopedology by promoting the hierarchy concept of pedo-sedimentary features from which derives his concepts of pedological phase and cycle as well the concept of pedo-sedimentary sequence of events (Fedoroff et al., 2009). The importance of this last concept lies in the identification and reconstruction of successive pedo-sedimentary processes that affected a paleosol and more broadly all terrestrial sediments affected by pedogenesis. Because paleosols are usually complex and difficult to be dated, the hierarchy concept became a powerful tool in paleo-environmental reconstruction using the seriation of pedo-sedimentary features to establishing a high resolution chronological frame. From this sense, he has significantly lightened the studies of a wide range of terrestrial paleoclimate records including paleosols (Fedoroff et al., 1990). One of the most important contributions of Nick Fedoroff is his studies on the loess-paleosols sequences in Europe (Fedoroff and Goldberg, 1982) and in China (e.g. Guo et al., 1996). Nick Fedoroff played a pioneering role for identifying abrupt climate events in paleosols on the basis of micro-pedofeatures. This innovative effort was initiated in the early1980s (Fedoroff and Goldberg, 1982), and has been systematically developed since then, as outlined in Fedoroff et al. (2009). We are numerous to be proud of having benefitted from his rich input, having more particularly appreciated his sense of logic, his humility for elucidating the unknown and his unsatiable curiosity. We still have so much to learn from Nick Fedoroff for training the raising new generation of soil micromorphologists. So we deeply congratulate Nick for receiving the Kubiena award and we wish him to keep a fresh enthusiasm on the road of Soil History. M.A. Courty
References: Fedoroff. N., 1991. Possibilities of paleopedology for environmental reconstructions Special proceedings. Review reports. For symposia of the XIIIth INQUA Inter. Congress, Beijing, China, 117-120. Fedoroff. N., 1997. Clay illuviation in red mediterranean soils. Catena 28 :171-189. Fedoroff. N., 2003. Weathering and development of chemically mature soils. In: Encyclopedia of Life Support Systems. UNESCO. EOLSS publishers Co Ltd. Fedoroff, N. and Courty, M.A.,1982. Soil fabric at the microscopic level. In: Constituents and Properties of Soils. M. Bonneau and B. Souchier (Eds),Academic Press, London, 288-303. Fedoroff, N. & Goldberg, P., 1982. Comparative micromorphology of two late Pleistocene paleosols (in the Paris basin). Catena, 9 :227-232. Fedoroff, N. & Eswaran, H., 1985. Micromorphology of Ultisols. In: Soil micromorphology and Soil Classification. SSSA Spe. Pub. 15:145-164. Fedoroff, N., Bresson, L.M. and Courty, M.-A. (Eds), 1987. Micromorphologie des Sols -Soil Micromorphology. Association Française pour l'Étude du Sol, Plaisir. Fedoroff, N., Courty, M.A., & Thompson, M.L., 1990. Micromorphological evidence of paleoenvironmental change in Pleistocene and Holocene Paleosols. In :Soil Micromorphology : a basic and applied science, L.A. Douglas (Ed.). Developments in Soil Science 19. Elsevier, 653-665. Fedoroff, N., Courty, M.A., Lacroix, E. & Oleschko, K., 1994. Calcitic accretion on indurated volcanic materials (example from tepetate, Altiplano, Mexico). 15th Inter. Congress of Soil Science, Acapulco, Mexico, V, 6a : 460-473 Fedoroff, N., Courty, M.A., & Guo Zhengtang, 2009. Deciphering paleosols and relict soils at microscopic scales. In: Interpretation of micromorphological features of soils and regoliths. G. Stoops, V. Marcelino & F. Mees (eds). Elsevier (under press). Achyuthan, H. and Fedoroff, N., 2008. Ferricretes in Tamil Nadu, Chennai, South-Eastern India: From Landscape to Micromorphology, Genesis, and Paleoenvironmental Significance. In: New trends in Soil Micromorphology. S. Kapur, A. Mermut, A. and G. Stoops, (Eds). Springer, 111-136. Bullock, P., Fedoroff, N., Jongerius, A., Stoops, G. and Tursina, T., 1985. Handbook for Soil Thin Section Description. Waine Research Publications, Wolverhampton.. Bunting, B.T. and Fedoroff, N., 1974. Micromorphological aspects of soil development in the Candian High Arctic. In:, Soil Microscopy. G.K. Rutherford (Ed). The Limestone Press, Kingston, Ontario, 350-365. Courty, M.A. and Fedoroff, N., 1982. Micromorphology of a Holocene dwelling. Proceedings of Nordic Archaeometry, 257-277. Guo Z, Fedoroff. N. & Liu T. S., 1996. Micromorphology of the loess-paleosol sequence of the last 130 ka in China and paleoclimatic events. Sci. China 39 (series D):468-477. |
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International Union of Soil Science (IUSS) |
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Commission 1.1: Soil Morphology & Micromorphology |
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Maria Curie-Sklodowska University, Lublin, Poland |
