Life in the USA is not normal. It feels pointless and trivial to be talking about small looks at the fascinating natural world when the country is being dismantled. But these posts will continue, as a statement of resistance. I hope you continue to enjoy and learn from them. Stand Up For Science!
Most of you know I did a lot of work on the magnetic map of the Former Soviet Union, trying to unravel its tectonic story. That was a huge task, given that it represents about one-sixth of the land surface of the earth, and I spent all of 1990 and much of 1991 and 1992 on that project and spin-off work. I’ve never learned so much in such a short time.
I’ve shared some of the relatively local aspects of the interpretation previously; if you are interested, probably the easiest way to find them is to search The Geologic Column for the word “Soviet.” But I don’t think I have shared this look at the full map, which shows the data, published by the Soviet Union, that I had digitized as part of this project.
The map here shows a small-scale compilation of the magnetic data. Each of the 18 sheets is about 2 feet by 3 feet at the original scale, and the blurry version with the overlay, above, shows the major tectonic features of the region in a very arm-waving sense. That’s largely just a simplification and abstraction of the complete detailed interpretation. I used this small 30x20-inch (76x51 cm) map as a portable product to accompany one of the talks I gave at the Society of Exploration Geophysicists convention in Moscow in 1992 – much easier than hauling and displaying the full-size sheets.
The photo above shows one of the Russian Orthodox churches within the Kremlin. The welcome party for the SEG convention was in a modern (probably 1960s) hall inside the Kremlin, and the farewell party was at Catherine the Great’s palace. Pretty cool.