The work of the expedition of the Geological Committee under the leadership of N. N. Tikhonovich and P. I. Polevoy in Sakhalin

On April 8 (21), 1908, the Geological Committee decided to send two research parties to Sakhalin at the same time. N. N. Tikhonovich led an expedition to the north of the island, P. I. Polevoy - to the east coast.

The works, which continued until late autumn, had success: Polevoy was able to discover several new oil fields, including the Piltun, Malo-Imchinskoye, Kydylansk and others. The study of the stratigraphy of this area was begun for the first time. In 1909, all the attention of the expedition was focused on the study of coal deposits on the west coast of Sakhalin. As a result of the study of this area, it was possible for the first time to get a detailed picture of the conditions of occurrence and distribution of coal on the west coast of Sakhalin, “to clarify the position of the coal-bearing strata in the general suite of strata and establish the connection between individual deposits”. As a result of the work of 1910 Polevoy was able to establish that the Tym-Poronay lowland had a greater extent than the researchers had assumed until then. A number of new peaks of the Eastern Range was also discovered.

Party of Tikhonovich in 1908-1910 studied the geological structure of the Schmidt Peninsula and described for the first time. During their research on Sakhalin, Polevoy and Tikhonovich discovered a whole range of new oil, coal, peat and other mineral deposits.

Thanks to the three-year work of the expedition, the map of Sakhalin was significantly refined - an area of ​​26 thousand square kilometers was filmed on a two-vertex scale. In the northern and eastern parts of the island “... new bays and lakes were discovered, the sources of rivers, orographic representations, which have remained unchanged since the days of Glen, were examined and changed. The direction of the ridges was traced, their number and hypsometric relationships were determined. ” Expedition 1908–1910 gave new names to a number of geographical objects (mountains of Lopatin, Nevelsky, etc.). According to the results of research on Russian Sakhalin in 1915 the “Geomorphological essay of the Russian Sakhalin” by N. Tikhonovich and P. Polevoy was published. The capes in Uglegorsk district are named after them.

Lit.: Полевой Б. П. В поисках нефти и угля на Сахалине ; Новая геологическая карта острова // Исследователи Сахалина и Курил : сб. материалов. Южно-Сахалинск, 1961. С. 85–93; Справочник по физической географии Сахалинской области. Южно-Сахалинск, 2003. С. 6, 7.

The material has been provided by the Sakhalin Regional Universal Research Library