Vegetation dynamics and fire history at the southern boundary of the forest vegetation zone in European Russia during the middle and late Holocene

Climate and human activity affected significantly the Eurasian on the forest vegetation zone through the Holocene. This paper presents new multi-proxy records of environmental changes at the southern boundary of the mixed coniferous broadleaved forest zone in the east-central part of the East Europe...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inHolocene (Sevenoaks) Vol. 28; no. 2; pp. 308 - 322
Main Authors Novenko, Elena Y, Tsyganov, Andrey N, Payne, Richard J, Mazei, Natalia G, Volkova, Elena M, Chernyshov, Viktor A, Kupriyanov, Dmitry A, Mazei, Yuri A
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published London, England SAGE Publications 01.02.2018
Sage Publications Ltd
Subjects
Charcoal
Climate
Dynamics
Environmental changes
Evapotranspiration
Fires
Forests
Harvesting
Holocene
Human influences
Humification
Palaeoecology
Peat
Pine trees
Plant control
Pollen
Radiocarbon dating
Radiometric dating
Rainfall
Stone Age
Vegetation
testate amoebae
fire-free interval
Mordovia State Nature Reserve
peatlands
pollen
plant macrofossils
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Summary:Climate and human activity affected significantly the Eurasian on the forest vegetation zone through the Holocene. This paper presents new multi-proxy records of environmental changes at the southern boundary of the mixed coniferous broadleaved forest zone in the east-central part of the East European Plain during the middle and late Holocene. Palaeoecological analyses of a peat core for pollen, charcoal, peat humification, plant macrofossils and testate amoebae with dating using radiocarbon have shown that climate appears to have been a dominant control on vegetation. There is strong evidence for a reduced precipitation–evapotranspiration ratio and high fire frequency during the Holocene thermal maximum (6.9–5.3 ka BP), leading to dominance of Betula–Pinus forests. By contrast subsequent climatic cooling led to the expansion of broadleaved forests and establishment of Picea. Human activities influenced vegetation from the Neolithic onwards but played a role which was secondary to climate until the recent past. Over the last century, human impacts considerably increased because of harvesting of broadleaved trees and contributed to the formation of the current mixed coniferous broadleaved forests.
ISSN:0959-6836
1477-0911
DOI:10.1177/0959683617721331