ИСТИНА

Basic concept on the geography of Arctic and Antarctic soils was developed >40 years ago (Tedrow, 1977). During this period, the abundant information on both soils themselves and soil-forming factors was obtained. This information relevant to soil geography was analyzed and compared. It has been found out that the cold deserts of Antarctica are very specific and differ from other Arctic and Antarctic soil covers by extremely arid climatic conditions and the absence of liquid water. They differ from other polar landscapes also by the set of soil processes (nitrate salinization, rubefaction). All the other pedoregions of two high latitude macroregions have both common and specific features. Antarctic ones differ from their northern analogues by warmer winter and much colder summer, by less fine earth and calcite and scarce, if any, vascular plants. The paradox is that in spite of such difference in soil-forming factors the sets of soils in Arctic and Antarctic, except cold deserts, are almost the same. Anyway, subpolar and polar soil landscapes of Arctic and Antarctic are not similar ones - they have essentially difference, especially in much larger discontinuity of soil cover in the latter. The common feature of High Arctic and Antarctic soil geography that they have no manifested soil zones but only “islands of pedosphere” in glaciers in Antarctic and in the ocean and glaciers in High Arctic. These fragments of soil cover don’t depend on the latitude and macroclimate but mostly are controlled by local factors – topography, parent materials, wind direction, seas bird rookeries. Contrary to the rest parts of the globe this type of soil geography can be named as “insular (or patchy) type of soil distribution” (ITSD). Arctic as a whole has two soil zones “Low Arctic tundra and Mid Arctic tundra” and the northernmost High Arctic ITSD that should be named “tundra-barren”. The Antarctic continent with adjacent islands has ITSD with different pedoregions “Subantarctic tundra - Low Antarctic tundra-barren - Mid Antarctic cryptogamic barren – High Antarctic and nunatak Cold desert”.