Soviet Books in Oceanography
- Publication
- Science
- Volume
- 154
- Issue
- 3752
- Pages
- 995–998
Atlas of Antarctica · Version 1
1966Frank T. Manheim reviews Volume I (1966) of the Atlas of Antarctica as the outstanding work among five Soviet oceanographic publications. Its 225 color plates, facing-page explanations, and geographical index cover Antarctic exploration, physical geography, geophysics, geology, climate, ice, biology, and Southern Ocean hydrology and sediments. The volume combines nearly eight years of Soviet expedition work with international observations extending from Cook and Furneaux’s voyages of 1772–1775 through 1963; nearly 300 scientists contributed. Manheim praises the cartographic production, complete citations of Soviet and foreign data sources, and restrained contouring where observations are sparse. He notes that all maps use a polar azimuthal equal-area projection, with scales ranging from 1:120,000,000 to 1:100,000. His reservations concern the volume’s cumbersome size and weight, predominantly Cyrillic text, and the uncertain durability of its glued binding. He strongly recommends institutional purchase and judges the compilation likely to spare researchers substantial archival work. A second, textual volume was still in preparation.
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This review examines five Soviet oceanographic publications and the obstacles to their circulation in the United States, including difficult procurement, inadequate Western abstracting coverage, limited print runs, and language barriers. Manheim cautions that publication counts are misleading because Soviet collections of papers partly serve the role of journals. Chemistry of the Pacific Ocean assembles scattered hydrochemical data and includes sediment pore waters, although the series structure restricts interdisciplinary discussion. Radioecology of Marine Organisms draws extensively on international literature, but insufficiently critical data selection and poorly specified experimental conditions reduce its usefulness. Lisitsin’s Recent Sedimentation in the Bering Sea receives strong praise alongside criticism of its mineral identification and sediment chemistry, while Recent Sediments of the Seas and Oceans surveys a broad range of Soviet research. The reviewer particularly recommends the first volume of the Atlas of Antarctica (1966), praising its integration of international data through 1963, comprehensive source citations, cartographic production, and cautious treatment of sparsely documented regions.
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