No 5 (2024)

Changes in the water surface level in the World Ocean and seas directly, and most often negatively, aff ct economic activity in coastal areas. After the completion of the last glacial maximum, ocean transgression due to the fl w of meltwater from glaciers at a rate of tens of millimeters per year practically stopped 4 thousand years ago. However, with the beginning of the technogenic era, due to the acceleration of further degradation of ice sheets, the rise in sea level, which is estimated at a few millimeters per year, resumed. However, there is still a contribution to the change in modern sea level from the residual effects of post-glacial transgression. The article examines one of the most significant residual effects influencing the current change in the water level of the World Ocean and manifesting itself in regions remote from the centers of glaciation - the effect of hydroisostasy. Hydroisostasy is a change in the load on the earth’s surface and the response of the earth’s surface as a result of an increase or decrease in the depth of the water layer in reservoirs (lakes, seas, oceans) after the melting or growth of glaciers. Significant consequences of hydroisostasy, in addition to the contribution to the reshaping of the structure of coastal areas, also appear to be a contribution to modern geodynamics.

In 1949, a geological expedition led by V.V. Kolpakov discovered an amazing natural object, later called the Patom crater, which has become a mystery of the relief of Eastern Siberia to the present day, since it has no analogues in the world. The first special scientific expedition, very poorly equipped due to the difficulty of delivering complex equipment to this anomalous structure, lost in the remote taiga far from civilization, took place only in 1963. Starting in 2005, the crater became the object of comprehensive research by many expeditions, which included specialists from various scientific fields. When studying the larches on the slopes and inside the crater, its relatively young age was calculated (several centuries). But the Patom crater remains an unresolved problem in the issue of clarifying its genesis and thus is the subject of further study for scientists of the XXI century.