Preface for the Special Issue on “Environment Evolution and Human Activity in the Late Quaternary: Geographical Pattern”

This issue is dedicated to the topics discussed in the Environment Evolution Commission’s session at the Kyoto Regional Conference of the International Geographical Union, held from 4 to 9 August 2013. The main goals of the issue are: (1) to discuss various topics regarding environmental evolution in different areas during the Pleistocene and Holocene; (2) to quantify and analyze the recent and proposed future climatic trends in the region; and (3) to estimate the human impacts on ecosystems under present and future climatic conditions in the Eurasian and Western Pacific region. To understand the contemporary state of this system, it is necessary to perform an evolutionary analysis of terrestrial environments, one that estimates its stability and variability as influenced by closely interrelated natural environmental trends and anthropogenic impacts. Thus, a natural trend toward cooling, as identified from paleogeographic data, is superimposed upon the process of human-induced warming. This combination of factors influencing the landscape–climatic system in opposite directions decreases the system’s stability. This special issue presents six papers on a wide range of subjects including human–environment interaction in the past, landscape evolution during the Pleistocene and Holocene, recent and future climatic changes, anthropogenic impacts on ecosystems, flood geomorphology, wetland development, and approaches for modelling land surface– atmosphere interactions. These topics are the basis of collaboration within the international scientific community investigating environment evolution and prognosis. This special issue is devoted to studies conducted in the Eurasian and Western Pacific region (Figure 1). Rudenko and Taldenkova carried out a high-resolution micropaleontological analysis of bottom sediments of Cheshskaya Bay in the southeastern Barents Sea and marine beds exposed in an abraded terrace along the eastern coast of the Kanin Peninsula to reconstruct Holocene vegetation and climatic changes. Pollen analyses revealed that (1) an arctic desert environment that was colder and drier than the present climate dominated during the early Preboreal period; (2) the gradual advance of shrubby birch and pine forest resulted from significant climatic amelioration since the Boreal period; (3) subsequent expansion of birch forests marked the Holocene regional climate optimum; and (4) re-establishment of dwarf birch and pine forest signaled the vegetation response to the cooling that has occurred since the end of the Atlantic period. The advantages and usefulness of pollen analysis for the investigation of environmental change are also demonstrated by Novenko and Volkova, who reconstructed the middle and late Holocene vegetation and climatic history of the forest–steppe ecotone area in the Upper Preface for the Special Issue on “Environment Evolution and Human Activity in the Late Quaternary: Geographical Pattern”