Vegetation and climate of Kola Region (NW Russia) inferred from complex studies of Late Glacial and Holocene lake sediments.

A prerequisite for the improvement and validation of climate projections is a more thorough understanding of the natural variability of past Arctic climate change on a range of geological timescales, when external forcings and boundary conditions have been different. Here we present and discuss results from a coring campaign in the Kola Region in the Russian Arctic. Sedimentary lake records from Imandra and Kamenistoye Lakes, located 80 km apart, provide insight into palaeoenvironmental changes over the Late Pleistocene to Holocene, as revealed by palaeolimnological multiproxy approaches on the basis of sedimentological, geochemical, geochronological and micropalaeontological data series. Here we discuss pollen records of two lakes supported by AMS ¹⁴C data. Imandra Lake was studied within a scope of joint German-Russian project. The pollen record of Imandra Lake shows the Younger Dryas event marked by increasing Artemisia, Cyperaceae, Poaceae and Salix at c. 13000 to 11400 cal. BP. But at the same time pollen record from Kamenistoye Lake indicates extremely low pollen concentration up to c. 10400 cal. BP. A sharp transition from tundra-steppe habitats to birch forest-tundra associated with the onset of Holocene warming was fixed in both lakes but in different time. Possible, it connects with different deglaciation time of the area. The Holocene Thermal maximum with the most favorable conditions for thermophilic taxa corresponds to period from c. 8000 to 4600 cal. BP. These new cores will provide the most detailed records from the region, which have a great potential to shed new light on the climatic and environmental of the Russian Arctic. The study is supported by the SPSU project Id: 38177967.