Dranitsyn, D.A.: A Note about Loess in North Africa

Title

Zametka o severo-afrikanskom lesse, “Zemlevedenie”, 1914, 3, p. 127-136

A Note about Loess in North Africa

Keywords

Summary

In the introduction, the author of the article states that at a 1909 conference, Prof. Penck contradicted Prof. Grund regarding the presence of loess in North African desert areas. In his article, the author aims at clarifying this issue by explaining that, in the spring of 1913, he visited Algeria to study its soil formations and specifically explored the Biskra oasis described by Grund. However, Dranitsyn’s findings support Penck’s conclusions, as the author asserts that he did not find any loess strata in this particular area. Consequently, in the conclusion of the study, the author refutes Grund’s claim about the presence of “modern loess” near Biskra and on the edge of the Sahara. Instead, he identifies only water-borne sediments, associated with the Oued-el-Biskra valley, and the cultural, irrigated oasis area, which is surrounded by sands and salt marshes, among the more clayey formations.

Bio

Dmitrii Dranitsyn was a scientist, geomorphologist, geographer, and traveller. He graduated from Imperial St. Petersburg University in 1909. In the spring of 1913, he travelled to Africa, visiting French Algeria and Tunisia. The results of this journey were presented in his work A Trip to Algeria (1915), with one chapter devoted to the characterization of Algerian soils. He made important contributions to the study of the geomorphology of the Chelief River and the desert soils of the Algerian Sahara. Dranitsyn gathered extensive material for the geographical comparison of North Africa with Turkestan and conducted soil-botanical studies in the regions of Asian Russia. He also participated in the First World War, where he died on the Caucasian front in Turkey. Dranitsyn was buried in St. Petersburg at the Smolensk Armenian Cemetery.

Sources

Sibirskaia sovetskaia entsiklopediia, ed. by M. Azadovskii, t. 1, Novosibirsk, 1929, p. 855;

Entsiklopedicheskii spravochnik “Afrika”, ed. by A. Gromyko, Moskva 1986-1987, p. 481.

M.E.