Dokuchaev Award 2006

Victor Targulian

Victor Targulian has spent his 50-year scientific career striving to develop a pedology model as a basic Earth and Biosphere science.

During that time, he has described the place and role of the pedosphere among the surface exogenic systems of the Earth and other terrestrial planets while formulating the concept of soil memory as a specific type of record of the biosphere-geospheres interactions.

Targulian has developed the general theory of soil system behavior in-time based on the concept of characteristic times of the specific pedogenic processes.

He has also studied and revealed the main features of the weathering and pedogenic processes in arctic and boreal humid areas of the northern Eurasia, while developing the method of very detail-field mezo-morphological investigation in complex-organized soil bodies (Albeluvisols) and has studied their cutans assemblages as soil memory carriers and intrasoil barriers and membranes.