Palaeoenvironmental records from Siberia and the Russian Far East – contributions from DIMA Network members – Introduction

As concern about the effects of climate change on northern regions increases, an important goal of palaeoenvironmental science is placing events that appear to be unprecedented—such as the severe boreal forest fires of recent years (Witze et al. 2020)—into a long-term context. The boreal forest zone covers a large span of latitude from the permafrost-affected northern treeline to the southern border with steppe and the diverse mixed temperate forest. Over two thirds of the world’s boreal forest and about a third of the northern hemisphere terrestrial carbon pool lies within Russian territory, and much of this is east of the Ural Mountains, in Siberia and the Russian Far East (SRFE) (Kuusela 1992, Stolbovoi 2002). With the awareness of the region’s sensitivity to climate change growing, it is clear that this vast expanse is understudied. Scientific centres, now associated with the Russian Academy of Sciences, have long histories of pioneering research in SRFE, and there continues to be an impressive flow of new data from these institutions, despite complex logistics of working in remote locations. A problem, however, is that a large proportion of this research is not available to the international community, primarily because of language limitations (i.e. the need to publish in English for the international audience and the inability of most of that audience to read papers published in high quality Russian scientific journals). International research cooperation can provide an avenue for greater dissemination of Russian research (for example, the Lake Baikal and Lake El’gygytgyn drilling projects, ICDP 2020a, b), but many other nationally funded projects fall outside these joint ventures