The Holocene Dynamics of Vegetation and Ecological Conditions in the Polar Urals

Palynological, paleocarpological, and paleoentomological analyses of frozen peat deposits near Lake Pereval'noe, the Polar Urals, were performed to reveal the main stages of change in the pattern of vegetation over the period from the beginning of warming after the last Pleistocene glaciation to the late Holocene. Nine to four thousand years ago, the study region (at the present-day upper boundary of open larch forests) was covered with taiga forests, as the climate there was significantly warmer. These were larch–birch forests with an admixture of spruce and, later, spruce forests with larch and birch.