GENERAL STATEMENT

Loessial soils cover vast areas in the Ukraine, Byelorussia, southern part of European Russia, Transcaucasia, and Central Asia. Numerous power and irrigation projects were constructed in regions in which loessial soils were used as construction materials and structure foundations. In the 1930's, when properties of loessial soils were not known well enough, settlements of structures and subsidence of areas adjacent to irrigation canals and reservoir occurred, e.g. in the area of the Dnieper Hydropower project, in the Malo-Kabardinsky Irrigation System (North Caucasus), and in Central Asia. Gradually much information on the behavior of loessial soils used for foundations and embankments has been collected, and voluminous research has been carried out, especially in the study of properties of loess causing extreme settling of soil.