Olga N Solomina

Russian Academy of Sciences | RAS · Insitute of Geography

In this study we used 14 spruce tree-ring width local chronologies from sites that are located in different landscape conditions. The climatic response function for the entire period (116 years) shows that all local chronologies without exception have a positive relationship with June temperature (from 0.196 to 0.408) despite quite different local...

Reconstruction of the historical mass balance of Bordu, Kara-Batkak and Sary-Tor glaciers between 1750 and 2020 using a simple energy balance model.

The data set presented represents 15 years of collection. It contains tree-ring width measurements from 64 sites of living trees and ten historical chronologies based on archaeological and construction wood up to year 572 CE, altogether 2909 tree-ring series and more than 450000 measured and cross-dated tree rings. It covers the vast territory of E...

Space-based tracking technology using low-cost miniature tags is now delivering data on fine-scale animal movement at near-global scale. Linked with remotely sensed environmental data, this offers a biological lens on habitat integrity and connectivity for conservation and human health; a global network of animal sentinels of environmental change.

Since the late-19th century, the Middle Volga has played a major role in the supplying grains and other agricultural products to European Russia. The study area is located in the south of sub-boreal forest in the north and in the forest-steppe in the south. Due to large seasonal differences in rainfall, agriculture in the region, especially in its...

Three paleosols buried in the left lateral moraines of the Greater Azau Glacier (Northern Caucasus) were identified in an excavated outcrop (43.2658 N, 42.4766 E, 2370 m a.s.l.). When the glacier was overlying the surface of the lateral moraines at this site, the thickness of the ice was 50 m and more above the valley floor. Fragments of charcoal f...

The mean specific mass balance of a glacier represents the direct link between a glacier and the local climate. Hence, it is intensively monitored throughout the world. In the Kyrgyz Tien Shan, glaciers are of crucial importance with regard to water supply for the surrounding areas. It is therefore essential to know how these glaciers behave due to...

In this review, we have focused on the following key points: (1) living trees in European Russia and their climatic sensitivity. Species suitable for tree-ring analyses, their age limits, spatial distribution of temperature- and drought-sensitive trees, and the available tree-ring chronologies. (2) Extension of the living-tree chronologies using ar...

The projected climate change in the 21st century is expected to affect various forest ecosystems with corresponding ecological, economic, and social impact. Adaptation measures for forestry need to be planned well in advance, because the forests being regenerated today will have to cope with future climate conditions in long time periods. Here we u...

This paper presents new multi-proxy records of the Holocene environmental and climatic changes in the Western Caucasus revealed from a continuous sediment sequence from mountainous Lake Khuko (Caucasus State Natural Biospheric Reserve, 1744 m a.s.l.). Palaeoecological analyses of a sediment core for grain size, magnetic susceptibility, loss on igni...

To adapt Russian geographic education to modern trends of digitalization, we need to focus on the end-to-end implementation of geo-information technologies and methods of big spatial data processing in the training of all geographers, regardless of subject area. Both in federal education standards and in practice of geographical education, it is im...

A nonparametric clustering method, the Bagging Voronoi K-Medoid Alignment algorithm, which simultaneously clusters and aligns spatially/temporally dependent curves, is applied to study various data series from the Elbrus region (Central Caucasus). We used the algorithm to cluster annual curves obtained by smoothing of the following synchronous data...

To adapt Russian geographic education to modern trends of digitalization, we need to focus on the end-to-end implementation of geo-information technologies and methods of big spatial data processing in the training of all geographers, regardless of subject area. Both in federal education standards and in practice of geographical education, it is im...

Glacier variations over the past centuries are still poorly documented on the southern slope of the Greater Caucasus. In this paper, the change of Chalaati Glacier in the Georgian Caucasus from its maximum extent during the Little Ice Age has been studied. For the first time in the history of glaciological studies of the Georgian Caucasus, 10Be in...

Summary Glacier variations over the past centuries are still poorly documented on the southern slope of the Greater Caucasus. In this paper, the change of Chalaati Glacier in the Georgian Caucasus from its maximum extent during the Little Ice Age has been studied. For the first time in the history of glaciological studies of the Geor- gian Caucas...

One of the important problems in studying processes on the Earth has to do with monitoring animal migrations. ICARUS equipment installed in ISS RS supports global animal migrations monitoring from space. The ICARUS equipment was developed under the Cooperation Agreement between the German Aerospace Center (DLR) and the state corporation Roscosmos (...

Climate change projected for the 21 st century is expected to affect different forest ecosystems with corresponding ecological, economic, and social impacts. Modeling is extensively used to estimate the impacts of climate change on tree species distributions, but only several studies produced tree growth projections based on climate change scenario...

We present the European Russia Drought Atlas (ERDA) that covers the East European Plain to the Ural Mountains from 1400–2016 CE. Like the Old World Drought Atlas (OWDA) for the Euro-Mediterranean region, the ERDA is a one-half degree gridded reconstruction of summer Palmer Drought Severity Indices estimated from a network of annual tree-ring chrono...

The long-term relationship between temperature and hydroclimate has remained uncertain due to the short length of instrumental measurements and inconsistent results from climate model simulations. This lack of understanding is particularly critical with regard to projected drought and flood risks. Here we assess warm-season co-variability patterns...

The paper presents the results of an analysis of the spatial variability of pine tree-ring growth in the Solovetsky Islands. As a result of the field work, tree-ring network containing 14 dendrochronological pine sites in various habitats were developed. For each site, a local tree-ring width pine chronology (from 472 to 271 years) is obtained, rep...

Reference section of the bottom sediments of Lake Karakyol (Caucasus) is built based on the cores obtained during the 2010 and 2014 field works, taking into account radiocarbon dating and the data of analytical microstratigraphy. Using the methods of scanning micro-XRF, solid preparations of bottom sediments were scanned in 1 mm increments with sim...

Cores of bottom sediments of Lake Karakel (Northern Caucasus) were obtained in 2010 and 2014 to perform geochemical studies for reconstructing the regional paleoclimate of the late Holocene. Solid samples of bottom sediments were scanned via micro-XRF with a step of 1 mm at the shared resource center of the Siberian Synchrotron and Terahertz Radiat...

On the basis of dendrochronological, lichenometric and historical data with the use of Earth remote sensing materials, the evolution of the Donguz-Orun Glacier has been reconstructed over the past centuries. In this work we used aerial photographs of 1957, 1965, 1981, 1987, satellite image of 2009, as well as descriptions, photographs, maps and pla...

The Institute of Geography, Russian Academy of Sciences (RAS), was founded in Petrograd in 1918 as the Industrial-Geographical Department of the Commission for Studying Natural Production Forces. In 1934, it was moved to Moscow and renamed the Institute of Physical Geography of the USSR Academy of Sciences and then (in 1936) the Institute of Geogra...

Bottom sediments of the proglacial Lake Donguz-Orun situated at ∼2500 m a.s.l. in the Elbrus Region (Central Caucasus) reveal regular laminae, characteristic of proglacial varved lakes. This is the first laminated sediment sequence recorded in the region. However, visual counting of the layers was restricted due to partial indistinctness of the lam...

Reanalysis data show an increasing trend in Arctic precipitation over the 20th century, but changes are not homogenous across seasons or space. The observed hydroclimate changes are expected to continue and possibly accelerate in the coming century, not only affecting pan-Arctic natural ecosystems and human activities, but also lower latitudes thro...

В результате исследований последних лет было построено 59 хронологий ширины годич- ных колец сосны, ели и дуба для территории ЕТР продолжительностью 120–250 лет, что значительно превышает длину инструментальных наблюдений. Используя древесину из археологических раскопок и старых строений, с помощью перекрестного датирования были получены хронологии...

Kamchatka's forests span across the peninsula's diverse topography and provide a wide range of physiographic and elevational settings that can be used to investigate how forests are responding to climate change and to anticipate future response. Birch (Betula ermanii Cham.) and larch (Larix gmelinii (Rupr.) Kuzen) were sampled at eight new sites an...

The results of dendrochronological and radiocarbon dating by means of accelerator mass spectrometry (AMS) of six medieval icons, originating from northern European Russia and painted on wooden panels made from Scots pine, dated to the 15th to 17th centuries are presented. The panels of each icon were studied using dendrochronology. Five to six AMS...

Büntgen et al. reply — We agree with Helama et al. in their call for further research into the climate of the first half of the Common Era. However, we argue that they underestimate the combined efficacy of environmental, archaeological and historical indicators in establishing a prolonged period of cold summers across much of the Northern Hemisphe...

Along with Arctic amplification, changes in Arctic hydroclimate have become increasingly apparent. Reanalysis data show increasing trends in Arctic temperature and precipitation over the 20th century, but changes are not homogenous across seasons or space. The observed hydroclimate changes are expected to continue, and possibly accelerate, in the c...

Estimates of the influence of the Atlantic long-period oscillation (ALO) on the formation of droughts in Northern Eurasia were obtained using the results of numerical experiments with the ECHAM5 atmospheric chemistry general circulation model and the mixed layer ocean model. In general, the model results are consistent with the empirical estimates.

A global compilation of glacier advances and retreats for the past two millennia grouped by 17 regions (excluding Antarctica) highlights the nature of glacier fluctuations during the late Holocene. The dataset includes 275 time series of glacier fluctuations based on historical, tree ring, lake sediment, radiocarbon and terrestrial cosmogenic nucli...

The area covered by boreal forests accounts for ∼16% of the global and 22% of the Northern Hemisphere landmass. Changes in the productivity and functioning of this circumpolar biome not only have strong effects on species composition and diversity at regional to larger scales, but also on the Earth’s carbon cycle. Although temporal inconsistency in...

The spatial context is critical when assessing present-day climate anomalies, attributing them to potential forcings and making statements regarding their frequency and severity in a long-term perspective. Recent international initiatives have expanded the number of high-quality proxy-records and developed new statistical reconstruction methods. Th...

Reconstruction of fluctuations of Terskol Glacier situated on the south-western slope of Elbrus is presented. The reconstruction is based on remote sensing images of 1957, 1971, 1987, 1997, 2001, 2007 and 2009, maps, plans and photographs of the late 19th-20th centuries, as well as on modern photographs of the late 20th - the beginning of 21st cent...

No tree-ring chronologies were reported so far in the International Tree Ring Data Bank for the central part of the East-European Plain. This absence is traditionally explained by the lack of motivation for tree-ring research in this area. Indeed, due to the intense anthropogenic press the old trees are rare in this region and the climatic signal e...

We focused our study on the retreat of a typical valley glacier Kashkatash, located in the Elbrus Area. We compared the old photographs of the glacier forefields (H. Burmester, 1911; H. Altberg, 1927; E.N. Lukasheva, 1932; unknown author, 1939) with the aerial photograph of 1957, 1965, 1987, maps of scale 1:100 000 (1890) and 1:25 000 (1950s), sate...

This review summarises landform records and published age-estimates (largely based upon tephrochronology) to provide an overviewof glacier fluctuations upon the Kamchatka Peninsula during the Holocene and, to a lesser degree, earlier phases of glaciation. The evidence suggests that following deglaciation from the Last Glacial Maximum(LGM), the peni...

In this article we present the reconstruction of fluctuations of Alibek valley glacier situated in the Teberda valley, Western Caucasus. The former positions of glacier of the past 120 years were reconstructed basing on the old photographs of 1904, 1921, remote sensing data of 1955, 1987, 2007, 2008 and 2012, plans created in 20th century. Since th...

Field investigations showed that the leeward slopes across the Kuznetsky Alatay Mountains (also the windward slopes in the Tigertysh ridge) are intensively eroded by glaciers and represent the classical type of “alpine-type landscape”. Accumulative glacial landforms are developed in all types of glacial valleys. Study of five valleys (the Karatas,...

This paper briefly reviews the physical and human geography of the Kamchatka region and summarises previous research on Holocene climate dynamics. We provide context for the rest of the Special Issue of the Journal Global and Planetary Change entitled ‘Holocene climate change in Kamchatka’, the primary focus of which is the use of lake sediment rec...

To investigate climate variability in Asia during the last millennium, the spatial and temporal evolution of summer (June–July–August; JJA) temperature in eastern and south-central Asia is reconstructed using multi-proxy records and the regularized expectation maximization (RegEM) algorithm with truncated total least squares (TTLS), under a point-b...

Using instrumental archives, aerial photographs, satellite images, old maps, descriptions of early explorers and old photographs we identified and mapped nine front positions of the Ullukam Glacier (SW slope of Elbrus) for the period from the end of XIX to the early XXI centuries. In 1884–2009 glacier retreated by 775 m. It advanced from 1971 to 19...

This chapter summarises the climatic and environmental information that can be inferred from proxy archives of the Baltic Sea area during the past millennium (1000 years). The proxy archives mainly comprise tree-ring analyses together with historical documents on extreme weather events and weather-related disasters. In addition to the reconstructed...

Cores of bottom sediments from epiglacial Donguz–Orun Lake (Cis–Elbrusian, Northern Cau􏰀 casus) have been studied. Here we present descriptions of the sampling techniques, sample preparation, and analytical procedures by the X􏰀ray fluorescence method. The sedimentation rate, estimated by calculation of peaks of the Rb/Sr ratio as well as employing...

The exploration whether tree-ring data can be effectually applied for the mass balance reconstruction in Caucasus was the main goal of this research. Tree-ring width and maximum density chronologies of pine (Pinus sylvestris L.) at seven high-elevation sites in Northern Caucasus were explored for this purpose. As well as in other places of the temp...

Radiocarbon and tree-ring dating of the soil horizons, buried in the slope and fluvioglacial deposits in Baksan and Teberda valleys, bring evidence of the reduction of the avalanche activity, stabilization of the slopes and soil formation on their surfaces. In the Baksan section three such horizons are identified, while in the Teberda section only...

The magnitude of glacier advances generally increased in the Northern Hemisphere and decreased in the Southern Hemisphere over the Holocene. This trend can be explained be the orbital forcings. The exceptions are in some regions of the high Asia. 10–4 ka BP and during the 1th Century CE to the early 13th century CE the glaciers were close by sizes...

A global overview of glacier advances and retreats (grouped by regions and by millennia) for the Holocene is compiled from previous studies. The reconstructions of glacier fluctuations are based on 1) mapping and dating moraines defined by 14C, TCN, OSL, lichenometry and tree rings (discontinuous records/time series), and 2) sediments from proglaci...

While paleoclimatic studies have extended our understanding of North Pacific climate variability, these have been almost exclusively based on proxies from western North America. We present a tree-ring reconstruction of June to September coastal air temperatures for Nemuro, northeastern Japan for the past four centuries. It explains 36% of the varia...

This review summarises landform records and published age-estimates (largely based upon tephrochronology) to provide an overview of glacier fluctuations upon the Kamchatka Peninsula during the Holocene and, to a lesser degree, earlier phases of glaciation. The evidence suggests that following deglaciation from the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM), the pe...

A new ring-width record from the eastern flanks of the Eastern Sakhalin Range, Sakhalin Island, Russian Federation is significantly correlated with summer temperatures and allows for the reconstruction of May–July average temperatures for the past 400 years. The reconstruction explains 37 % of the variance in May–July temperatures and shows a stron...

We present here the results of spruce (Picea schrenkiana Fish. et May.) tree-ring research in the Tien Shan Mountains, Kirgiz Republic. We explore the connection between climatic parameters and spruce ring width and maximum density at the upper and lower tree limits and provide two reconstructions: the May-August temperature reconstruction from 162...