During the last 10-15 years a number of research projects have been studying the Quaternary history of northern Russia and Siberia. This includes several multinational projects that were coordinated by the European Science Foundation Program «Quaternary Environment of the Eurasian North» (QUEEN). A long-lasting field campaign has been carried out within the framework of the Russian-Norwegian project «Paleo Environment and Climate History of the Russian Arctic» (PECHORA) that was launched in 1992. The overall aim of this project has been to improve our understanding of past environmental changes as well as the human occupation in northern Russia. Important research topics have been the timing and extension of the Quaternary glaciations and the colonization of ice age humans.

Some of the results that have been obtained through the QUEEN program have to a large degree changed our comprehension of the ice sheet history in this part of the world. A key finding was that, unlike the Scandinavian Ice Sheet, the southern and eastern flank of the Barents-Kara Ice Sheet attained its maximum position during early stages (90 and 60,000 years ago) of the last Ice Age. At that time the ice sheet expanded far onto the continent and formed major ice-dammed lakes on the lowlands between the ice front and the water divide. A surprising discovery for us from the West was that the Russian mainland to the east of the White Sea was not glaciated during the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM) at which time the Scandinavian Ice Sheet reached its maximum size. Perhaps most thought provoking was the discovery of nearly 40,000 years old traces of human occupation in the Russian Arctic.

Our understanding of the ice age history is to a large extent based on optically stimulated luminescence (OSL) dates from exposed sections. The dating results relate to geological and geomorphologic features that have been used for long distance correlation. Even though the applications of OSL dating have brought us a large step forward it should be noted that the method is still in its days of childhood and there are several sources of errors that are presently not fully understood. It should be noted that new ice sheet reconstructions that have been made are working hypothesis that needs to be tested out and refined by new investigations.

The stratigraphic framework for northern Russia is obtained through compilation of events found in a number of river bluffs, coastal cliffs and gravel pits, each representing short time windows in the geological record. Our understanding of past climatic changes in the Arctic is hampered by the lack of continuous paleoenvironmental records covering long time spans. In order to test the present hypothesis and obtain a long uninterrupted record of climate fluctuations it is necessary to core several lake basins.

Reference:

Svendsen J.I. Ice Age development and human settlement in northern Eurasia (ICEHUS) - a challenge. Correlation of Pleistocene Events in the Russian North. International Workshop Abstracts. 4-6 December 2006. Saint-Petersburg, 2006, p. 100.