in southern Siberia derived from a 15 kyr long pollen record from

Abstract. In this study a radiocarbon-dated pollen record from Lake Kotokel (52◦47 ′ N, 108◦07 ′ E, 458 m a.s.l.) lo-cated in southern Siberia east of Lake Baikal was used to derive quantitative characteristics of regional vegetation and climate from about 15 kyr BP (1 kyr=1000 cal. yr) until to-day. Quantitative reconstruction of the late glacial vege-tation and climate dynamics suggests that open steppe and tundra communities predominated in the study area prior to ca. 13.5 kyr BP and again during the Younger Dryas in-terval, between 12.8 and 11.6 kyr BP. The pollen-based cli-mate reconstruction suggests lower-than-present mean Jan-uary (∼−38◦C) and July (∼12◦C) temperatures and annual precipitation (∼270–300 mm) values during these time inter-vals. Boreal woodland replaced the primarily open landscape around Kotokel three times at about 14.8–14.7 kyr BP, dur