Scientific Research Laboratory of the latest Deposits and Paleogeography of the Pleistocene

Traditionally, the laboratory's research interests cover the continental regions of Northern Eurasia – paleogeographic patterns of climate and landscape change, including an independent sub-topic aimed at identifying patterns of geosystem development and complex paleogeographic zoning of the Russian Plain. For the first time in Russian science, Academician K.K. Markov studied and characterized in great detail the most important paleogeographic (space-time) patterns of the development of the Earth's nature during the Pleistocene. He named orientation, rhythmicity and local individuality as the main paleogeographic patterns of changes in the natural environment of the last million years or so. The study of these patterns, continued by Konstantin Konstantinovich's students based on the materials of the study of Pleistocene deposits of the supporting sections of Northern Eurasia, contributes to the replenishment of knowledge about the structure of the Pleistocene climatic rhythmics, paleogeographic development of the loess-soil formation, flora, vegetation, climate and landscapes in general in various areas of this territory, as well as solving key issues of the stratigraphy of the quarter.

Over the past decade, attention to the Arctic region has increased significantly, due to a number of reasons. First of all, this is due to the intensive development of mineral resources of the World Ocean, mainly hydrocarbons, the reserves of which the Russian Arctic occupies one of the leading places in the world. Thanks to the latest technical developments, oil and gas production extends beyond the shelves to the continental slope and into deep-sea basins, which determines the relevance of geological and paleogeographic studies in these areas. At the same time, oceanological and meteorological observations show that under the conditions of modern global climate change, the Arctic region is warming much faster than the rest of the globe, and if the temperature has increased by 1° on average over the past decades, then temperature increases of 5-7 ° have been recorded in the Arctic over the past 20-30 years. These rapid climatic changes lead to irreversible, often catastrophic processes, such as a reduction in the area of seasonal sea ice in the Arctic Ocean, melting of permafrost rocks, greenhouse gas emissions and others, the possible scale of which can be assessed by studies of ocean bottom sediments, which are "natural recorders". For many years, the laboratory staff has been conducting comprehensive studies of both marine and continental sediments in the Russian Arctic from the Kola Peninsula to Chukotka, and in almost all shelf seas from the White to the Chukchi. Research is traditionally conducted, as a rule, in collaboration with Russian scientific organizations (the P.P. Shirshov Institute of Oceanology of the Russian Academy of Sciences, VNIIOKEANGEOLOGY, AANI, Sevmorgeo and others), as well as within the framework of international projects: the Russian-German "Laptev Sea System" and "Siberian River Run-off", INTAS and others. We pay special attention to paleoceanological reconstructions of the Pleistocene and Holocene of the Laptev and White seas, the Eurasian and Amerasian basins of the Arctic Ocean. The main problems of paleoceanology of the Arctic Ocean are studied in the light of modern data on deep-sea drilling.

The marine basins of the south of Russia are a system of intracontinental reservoirs, relics of the Eastern Parathesis, differing in natural features and the history of paleogeographic development: the isolated Caspian Sea, the Azov and Black Seas and the Manych Depression, which in some epochs served as a strait between the Caspian Sea and the Pontus. The Marmara Sea, the "gateway" between the Black and Mediterranean Seas, is also part of the system. The region has a stratotypic significance for the creation of a unified stratigraphic and event scheme of Northern Eurasia. The scientific work of our laboratory traditionally pays considerable attention to paleogeography and correlation of Ponto-Caspian events. The research covers the entire Neopleistocene, and the focus of recent years has been on the latest climatic macrocycle. The study of the functioning of the Ponto-Caspian and Mediterranean basin system includes paleogeographic reconstructions based on a comprehensive analysis of drilling materials and regionally closely related deposits of nearby areas. A separate topic of the work is the evolution of the natural environment and the history of the development of the two largest deltas of the region - the Volga and Kuban.