Liu Dongsheng

Liu Dongsheng the Chinese geologist (1917-2008) widely regarded as the founder of environmental geology in China, whose studies of loess deposits, Quaternary climate and the relationship between the environment and human health reshaped the earth sciences in his country.

Early Life and Education

Liu Dongsheng was born on 6 November 1917 in Shenyang, Liaoning province. His family moved south during the upheavals of the early twentieth century, and he grew up in an atmosphere of national crisis and intellectual aspiration. From an early age he was drawn to the study of the earth and its history.

He entered the department of geography at what became Southwest Associated University during the war years and later studied at Nanjing University. He received his degree in geology in 1942 and then joined the geological survey, where he gained practical experience in field mapping and in the examination of rocks and sediments across the country.

In 1946 he went to the United States and studied at the California Institute of Technology, where he worked under leading geologists and was exposed to the modern methods of stratigraphy and geomorphology. He returned to China in 1950 with a broadened view of the earth sciences and a determination to apply them to Chinese problems.

The Study of Loess

The loess plateau of northern China is one of the most extensive deposits of wind-blown silt in the world, and it preserves a record of climate and environment stretching back over more than a million years. Liu Dongsheng devoted much of his career to deciphering this record, treating the thick yellow deposits as a natural archive of the past.

He established that the loess had accumulated in successive layers during cold, dry phases and that the intervening soils had formed during warmer and wetter intervals. The alternation of loess and soil thus recorded the oscillation of the climate, and the sequence could be correlated with the deep-sea record of oxygen isotopes and with the cycles of the earth's orbit.

His systematic mapping and dating of the loess deposits produced a detailed chronology of the Quaternary period in China. The work showed that the Chinese continental record was as long and as informative as any marine sequence, and it provided a framework that later researchers used to study the climate history of East Asia.

Environmental Geology and Health

Liu Dongsheng was a pioneer in the study of the interactions between geological materials and human health. He investigated the distribution of trace elements in soils and rocks and their transfer into water, crops and the human body, and he linked these geochemical patterns to the incidence of disease in different regions.

He studied the connection between the geochemistry of the environment and conditions such as endemic fluorosis and diseases associated with deficiencies or excesses of trace elements. By mapping the elemental composition of soils and sediments he helped to explain why certain illnesses clustered in particular areas, and his work laid the foundation of medical geology in China.

He also addressed the broader problems of soil erosion, desertification and the management of the fragile environments of northern and western China. He argued that the earth sciences had an obligation to contribute to the solution of practical problems and to the welfare of the populations whose lives were affected by environmental change.

Quaternary Research and Global Change

As a leading authority on the Quaternary, Liu Dongsheng took part in international programmes on global change and paleoclimate. He used the Chinese loess record to test ideas about the timing and causes of the ice ages and to compare the behaviour of the Asian monsoon with that of other parts of the world.

He was interested in the human dimension of these changes, including the question of how early human populations in China responded to shifts in climate and environment. He supported archaeological and paleoanthropological investigations that placed the stone-age remains of the region within their geological context.

He helped to build Chinese contributions to the great international research projects of the later twentieth century, and he represented the country in scientific bodies concerned with the study of the environment. His insistence on long time series and on careful field observation influenced a generation of Chinese geologists.

Influence and Legacy

Liu Dongsheng trained many students and established research groups that continued and extended his work. He served as the head of the Institute of Geology at the Chinese Academy of Sciences, and he was elected a member of the academy in 1980. His textbooks and monographs on loess and the Quaternary became standard references.

His name is associated with the recognition of the Chinese loess as one of the world's most important continental climate archives. The findings that emerged from his research are cited in studies of the global climate system, and the field of environmental geology that he founded has grown into a major part of the Chinese earth sciences.

He died on 6 December 2008 in Beijing at the age of ninety-one. He received the highest honours of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and international recognition for his contributions, and he is remembered as a scientist who united patient field work with a broad vision of the earth as a single interconnected system.

See also

• Loess
• Quaternary geology
• Environmental geology
• Chinese Academy of Sciences