GREAT MAPS (NOT): THE 1984 CIA MAP PERMAFROST REGIONS IN THE SOVIET UNION

Maps depicting the distribution of permafrost (perennially frozen ground) were first created in pre-Soviet Russia. Economic development in Siberia during the early years of the USSR resulted in large advances in permafrost science, including knowledge about its distribution. In the 1920s a scheme was advanced for mapping permafrost based on its lateral continuity. This scheme, in turn, was based on the zonal concept developed earlier by V. V. Dokuchaev in soil science. The concept of zones of permafrost continuity was introduced anonymously to English-speaking scientists through a pre-WWII paper in the journal Nature, and was subsequently employed by the Russian-born geologist S. W. Muller in a classified 1943 U. S. Army manual released for general circulation in 1947. Despite its severe limitations, the continuity-based classification scheme has continued to be used by North American and other western permafrost scientists to depict the geographical distribution of permafrost. This presentation examines several ironies in the history of permafrost research involving USA-USSR relations. Prominent among them is that the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency, an organization charged with analyzing and evaluating advanced information about foreign countries, used a simple, dated, and uninformative mapping strategy to depict frozen ground in the territory of its primary adversary at the time.