干旱区生态环境知识资源中心

Women scholars have contributed to the study of loess. Charlotte Hibbert made the first map of loess distribution and there were many subsequent achievements. The twenty people selected represent a subjective choice; there is no overall biobibliographical metric that can be applied. The twenty are mss: Hibbert, Owen, Swineford, Conea, Markovic-Marjanovic, Fotakieva, Ivanova, Davin, Coude-Gaussen, Wintle, Matviishina, Gerasimenko, Billard, Grabowska-Olszewska, Sycheva, Mavlyanova, Rendell, Lanczont, Klukanova, Morozova. The INQUA Loess Commission provides a convenient temporal divide, and also a divide in style of loess investigation: early studies pre-Commission; Loess Commission activities; modern scientific loess research post-Commission (after 2003).

Topics: Hypotheses of loess formation, aeolian vs. fluvial, aeolian vs. in-situ, desert loess, Danubian loess, INQUA Loess Commission, Dating techniques, hydroconsolidation, loessification, Ukraine, Russia, Central Asia, loess structure.

The paper by Jelena Markovic-Marjanovic in the 1961 INQUA Loess Symposium was one of the key pioneering documents in the development of loess stratigraphy; it should be more widely recognized.