Preface

Abstract

A sediment core from Lake KP3 (unofficial name) located near the coastline on the northern Kola Peninsula, 100 km east-south-east from Murmansk, Russia (69°04′19″N, 36°00′40″E) provides palynological evidence for the vegetation and climate history of the last 14,000 years. During the Younger Dryas time the climate was cold and vegetation cover around the lake consisted of a shrub birch-willow tundra. With warming during the early Holocene birch forest expanded across the Kola Peninsula and by 9500 cal yr BP a dense birch tree forests likely extended as far north as the modern Barents Sea coastline. By about 7800 cal yr BP Alnus incana was present as an admixture to birch in wet places as far north as the Barents Sea shoreline. Scots pine expanded to north of its modern limits on the Kola Peninsula between 7900 and 3700 cal yr BP with its maximum northward progress and abundance at 7300–6200 cal yr BP. Although scattered pines may have grown near the coastline, pine forests did not reach the Barents Sea coastal area and the region remained covered with birth forest-tundra as much as during earlier Holocene. The expansion of birch forest and pine forest in the early to mid Holocene likely reflects the impact of higher amounts of summer radiation due to Milankovitch forcing and warmer temperatures in the North Atlantic Ocean and Barents Sea. The mid-Holocene summer warming in the Barents Sea coastal area likely ranged from 1°C to 1.5°C above modern conditions. Following 5900 cal yr BP shrub tundra communities began to replace birch forest and pines on the northernmost Kola Peninsula. The modern tundra which occupies the coastal region near Lake KP3 was established at about 3100 cal yr BP. The vegetation and climatic changes evident on the northern Kola Peninsula are similar to those evident in northernmost Fennoscandia.