Continuous pollen and chironomid records from Lake Emanda (65°17′N, 135°45′E) provide new insights into the Late Quaternary environmental history of the Yana Highlands (Yakutia). Larch forest with shrubs (alders, pines, birches) dominated during the deposition of the lowermost sediments suggesting its Early Weichselian [Marine Isotope Stage (MIS) 5] age. Pollen‐ and chironomid‐based climate reconstructions suggest July tempera...

The 3.6‐Myr sedimentary record of Lake El'gygytgyn is crucial for understanding the response of the sensitive ecosystems in the Arctic to Quaternary climate variations at orbital timescales. In this study, we synthesize previously published pollen records and biome reconstructions and perform pollen diversity analysis of the deep‐drilling core ICDP 5011‐1 from Lake El'gygytgyn for periods during the Early Pleistocene (MIS 82 –...

Because continuous and high‐resolution records are scarce in the polar Urals, a multiproxy study was carried out on a 54 m long sediment succession (Co1321) from Lake Bolshoye Shchuchye. The sedimentological, geochemical, pollen and chironomid data suggest that glaciers occupied the lake's catchment during the cold and dry MIS 2 and document a change in ice extent around 23.5–18 cal ka bp. Subsequently, meltwater input, sedime...

The 45.95 m‐long sediment succession shown in core Co1401 from Lake Levinson‐Lessing allows the reconstruction of the largely unexplored environmental and climatic history of the Taymyr Peninsula of the past 62 kyr. The core was analysed with a multidisciplinary approach including lithological, granulometric, geochemical and pollen analyses. The proxy data indicate a relatively stable, herb‐dominated environment with only subt...

Although ancient DNA from sediments ( sed aDNA) has been used to investigate past ecosystems, the approach has never been directly compared with the traditional methods of pollen and macrofossil analysis. We conducted a comparative survey of 18 ancient permafrost samples spanning the Late Pleistocene (46–12.5 thousand years ago), from the Taymyr Peninsula in northern Siberia. The results show that pollen, macrofossils and sed...

Fossil pollen data supplemented by tree macrofossil records were used to reconstruct the vegetation of the Former Soviet Union and Mongolia at 6000 years. Pollen spectra were assigned to biomes using the plant‐functional‐type method developed by Prentice et al . (1996). Surface pollen data and a modern vegetation map provided a test of the method. This is the first time such a broad‐scale vegetation reconstruction for the grea...