ИСТИНА

Studies of permafrost deposits and ground ice provided insights on past environmental and climatic changes, covering several hundreds of thousands of years into the past. They provide multi-proxy evidence for multiple glacial/interglacial cycles and different periods of past climate change or stability in Arctic land environments.Based on multi-proxy analyses, mid- and late Quaternary periods were studied, resulting in >300 scientific papers. The approach includes geomorphic studies, various geochronological analyses, analysis of frozen sediments (for ice, carbon, nitrogen, and carbonate contents, grain-size parameters, magnetic susceptibility, heavy mineral compositions), ground ice (stable water isotopes, major ions) and of numerous fossil bioindicators, to reconstruct the Quaternary paleoenvironmental change. For vast Siberian areas where glacial records are not available, we aim on the establishment of permafrost as paleoclimatic archive, emphasizing peculiarities of permafrost age control and record resolution and stressing the great potential for understanding climate variability on glacial-interglacial timescales in Western Beringia.