ИСТИНА

In different countries there is an increasing awareness of the role of paleosols in paleoenvironmental reconstruction, and in agriculture and forestry. Paleosols are not always lifeless natural bodies, and they actually govern the present day physical, chemical and biological fertility of many ecosystems of the world. It is well known that the study of paleosols is often a complex and difficult task, although in many instances very rewarding. In recent decades, scientists of different countries have used different approaches in order to address this difficult task. The outcome of this situation is a composite scenario of approaches to paleopedology. This issue of Quaternary International, which includes many Russian contributors in addition to other authors fromother parts of the world, fits into this framework. This volume includes 18 papers produced by authors frommany different countries including Russia (5), UK, Germany, Italy, Poland, Hungary, Ukraine, India, China, USA, Switzerland, and Mexico. This volume may also provide an understanding for the international scientific community of the status of paleopedology research in many countries, as well as presenting different case studies and different important research approaches. A range of papers deals with a robust traditional approach, combining geomorphology mainly with soil morphology (in some case in association with magnetic susceptibility analysis) in order to infer regional paleoenvironmental information, as is the case for Golyeva and Chichagova, Fedeneva and Dergacheva, Sycheva et al., Zykina and Zykin, Fang et al., and Lanczont et al. In the same direction, Bronger attempts a large geographical correlation of loess soil sequences in Europe. A number of papers, including Scarciglia et al., Bronger and Sedov, Berenyi et al., Kemp et al., Solleiro-Rebolledo et al., and Terhorst and Ottner deal with the use of many analytical tools applied to soil material in order to infer paleoenvironmental information. In these papers, micromorphology in association with other techniques (XRD, DXRD, geochemistry, isotope analysis, OSL) plays a very important and powerful role. Where this combination of tools is applied, complex soil genesis issues seem to be successfully addressed. Two other interesting papers by Achyuthan and Pustovoytov refer to the use of carbonate features to infer paleoenvironmental data. With this issue, we hope to draw attention to the role of paleosols in terms of paleoenvironmental reconstruction, but also to the recognition of their large spatial distribution. In such a scenario, regional correlation studies may make important contributions in terms of management of many ecosystems governed by paleosols. In addition we hope to have shown that a combination of techniques (micromorphology, DXRD, OSL, and others) can give relevant advantages for the understanding of complex soil features. We thank all participants for their contributions and collaboration, and we also thank the reviewers for their greatly appreciated assistance.