The Middle and Late Holocene Vegetation and Climate History of the Forest-steppe Ecotone Area in the Central Part of European Russia

Abstract

The paper discusses the new results of vegetation and climate reconstructions based on pollen data from the area of the forest-steppe ecotone area in the central part of European Russia (the Upper Don River basin). The obtained evidence shows he occurrence of open forest-steppe and steppe landscape in the studied area during the Middle and Late Holocene. Climatic reconstructions using the best-modern-analogue (BMA) technique show that landscape dynamics in the region were driven by changes in effective moisture: an excess of precipitation over evaporation. The reductions in annual precipitation in 50–100 mm were sufficient to increase the share of steppe communities in the complex landscape (in time periods 7000–6000, 2500–1700 cal yr BP) and, probably, higher frequencies of wildfires. Signals of anthropogenic disturbance of vegetation are clearly pronounced in the pollen and plant macrofossil records since the middle Atlantic. However, human-induced changes in the vegetation remained subtle until the medieval period.