Tectonics and Metallogeny of the Circum-North Pacific and Eastern Asia
Leonid Parfenov Memorial Conference
Khabarovsk, 2007
Leonid Parfenov Memorial Conference
Khabarovsk, 2007
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The Contributions of Leonid M. Parfenov to the Tectonics of Eastern Russia
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The Contributions of Leonid M. Parfenov to the Tectonics of Eastern Russia
By Andrei Prokopiev, Kaz Fujita, and David Stone
Leonid M. Parfenov (1937-2002) was the leading force behind the interpretation of northeast Russia in the context of plate tectonics. Originally interested in Precambrian geology, he conducted his early field work in Southern Siberia in the 1960s. He was exposed to plate tectonics at Liverpool University in 1970 and published the first mobilistic reconstructions of the Precambrian in Russia in 1973.
In 1971, Leonid joined the Institute of Tectonics and Geophysics (ITiG) of the Far East Science Center in Khabarovsk where he organized and headed the Laboratory of Deep Tectonics. He also chaired the compilation of the Tectonic Map of the Far East USSR, during which time he amassed the broad database that he would use to initiate new interpretations of the geology and tectonics of the eastern Soviet Union.
Starting in 1971, he began to systematically conduct field work and accumulate geologic data on what is now considered the accretionary collage of northeast Russia. With colleague Boris A. Natal'in, he published a series of papers on the tectonic evolution of Eastern Russia starting in 1977, with a doctoral dissertation on "Comparative Tectonics and Evolution History of Mesozoides of Northeast Asia" in 1983.
His work became known in the west with his publication in 1978 in the Journal of Physics of the Earth on "Geodynamics of the Northeastern Asia in the Mesozoic and Cenozoic Time and the Nature of Volcanic Belts" in which the volcanic belts of Eastern Russia were interpreted in the context of subduction zones.
From the mid-1980s to his death, he concentrated on understanding the evolution of the fold belts of Eastern Yakutia. Parfenov immediately became a proponent of terrane analysis as it evolved in the early 1980s and was the primary mover in developing the terrane map of Northeast Russia in the late 1990s. In 1990, he developed joint programs with the University of Alaska Fairbanks and Michigan State University, and later with Stanford University and the U.S. Geological Survey, opening Eastern Russia to western scientists.
His life's work was synthesized in a monograph entitled "Tectonics, Geodynamics, and Metallogenesis of the Territory of the Sakha Republic (Yakutia)" published in Russian in 2001 and currently being prepared in English translation.
As a result of his efforts we now have a basic understanding of the plate tectonic evolution of Northeast Russia as a region of Phanerozoic rifting, terrane development, and collision.