Elsevier

Quaternary International

Volume 516, 20 May 2019, Pages 58-69
Quaternary International

Palaeoecological evidence for climatic and human impacts on vegetation in the temperate deciduous forest zone of European Russia during the last 4200 years: A case study from the Kaluzhskiye Zaseki Nature Reserve

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.quaint.2018.06.028Get rights and content

Abstract

Climate change and human activity considerably influenced the temperate European deciduous forests through the Holocene, with the anthropogenic impacts being detected even in currently protected areas. This paper is focused on the area of the Kaluzhskiye Zaseki Nature Reserve, which contains remnants of primary broadleaved forests in central European Russia. Here, we present a new multi-proxy record including pollen, plant macrofossils, charcoal, loss on ignition and radiocarbon dating from the Mochulya peatland supplemented by 14 radiocarbon dates of charcoal fragments from soil pits in the study area. The results show that Mochulya peatland was a fen throughout the most of the time it existed. During the last 4200 cal yr BP the study area was occupied by broadleaved forests of Quercus, Ulmus, and Tilia. Picea became relatively abundant after 2300 cal yr BP. Despite the long-term human impact, vegetation fragments of these forests have persisted in the area until the present. Three main periods of deforestation and frequent fires were identified: 3700–3200 cal yr BP, 2000–1600 cal yr BP (the Early Iron Age) and 1000–400 cal yr BP (the Medieval Period). Whereas human-induced vegetation changes were apparent during the last two periods, vegetation dynamics during 3700–3200 cal yr BP were likely caused, at least in part, by climatic factors.

Introduction

The east European temperate deciduous broadleaved forests extend as a wide belt from the Baltic and Dnieper in the west to the southern slope of the Ural Maintains (Bohn et al., 2003) and cover a large area of the East European Plain. Since the Neolithic, the plant cover of this area was transformed by anthropogenic activity (Khotinski, 1993; Veski et al., 2005; Zernitskaya and Mikhailov, 2009; Saarse et al., 2010; Bradley et al., 2013; Reitalu et al., 2013), and now the primary broadleaved forests persist as relatively small patches in nature reserves. Palaeoecological evidence of vegetation history, fire regime and pre-industrial human activities are critical for the development of strategies for forest management and conservation (Feurdean et al., 2016). Recent studies of forest ecology in Europe and North America demonstrate that ecosystem composition is primarily determined by climate, but disturbance by fire and human activity is also essential for influencing their structure, diversity and functions (Josefsson et al., 2009; Flannigan et al., 2009; Feurdean et al., 2017; Berner et al., 2017). At the same time a large body of research indicates that boreal and temperate deciduous forests were widely influenced by human impacts even in areas that are currently protected (Hicks, 1993; Bonnicksen, 2000; Kalis et al., 2003; Östlund et al., 2003; Karlsson et al., 2007). A key challenge is to integrate the reconstructions of the Holocene vegetation dynamics based on pollen and plant macrofossil analysis with long-term changes in fire regime inferred from charcoal records from peatlands, lakes and soils (Hallett and Hills, 2006; Clear et al., 2013; Robin et al., 2013; Feurdean et al., 2016).

Many palaeoecological studies have focused on vegetation history and fires in the forests of Eastern and Northern Europe. Most of these studies have been undertaken in boreal forests in Fennoscandia (Heikkilä and Seppä, 2003; Antonsson and Seppä, 2007; Miller et al., 2008) and temperate deciduous forests in the eastern Baltic region (Poska and Saarse, 1999; Seppä and Poska, 2004; Stančikaite et al., 2006; Niinemets and Saarse, 2009; Piličiauskas et al., 2012; Bradley et al., 2013) and Belarus (Zernitskaya and Mikhailov, 2009; Zernitskaya et al., 2015). These studies demonstrate that vegetation dynamics were influenced by temperature fluctuations and fires. For instance, expansions of Picea abies (fire sensitive species) occurred during periods when fire frequency was low. The importance of agriculture in these regions continuously grew with the appearance of the Iron Age hill fort settlements and reached the maximum extension during the Medieval period (Slobodin, 1952).

Several studies have been undertaken in the central part of European Russia and forest-steppe ecotone area (Krementski et al., 2000; Novenko et al., 2009, 2015; 2016; Ershova et al., 2014, 2016; Nosova et al., 2017). These studies recorded the spatial and temporal patterns of vegetation change and species expansion in the region during the Holocene and highlighted anthropogenic factors as one of the main forces in vegetation dynamics and fire regimes. For instance, humans have had considerable impact on the landscape in most European regions since the Middle Holocene (Behre, 1981; Ralska-Jasiewiczowa et al., 2003; Saarse et al., 2010; Bradley et al., 2013). Forest clearance for cropland and use of wood for fuel and building materials led to deforestation in large areas. This is particularly the case in the Iron Age as wood was required for smelting iron. The evidence of significant anthropogenic disturbance of vegetation in the central part of European Russia varies from 2500 cal yr BP in the wooded steppe to 1700–1500 cal yr BP in temperate deciduous forests and south taiga (Khotinski, 1993; Krementski et al., 2000; Novenko et al., 2014).

Despite a great volume of studies devoted to forest history and paleoecology, the temperate deciduous forests in central European Russia are still poorly investigated. In this study, we analyzed the long-term ecological effects of human activities in the Kaluzhskiye Zaseki Nature Reserve, which is considered to contain one of very few remnants of primary broadleaved forest in central European Russia. This forest is part of the formerly continuous forest belt along the south-western borders of Muscovy that was created in the 14th–16th centuries AD for the protection of state borders against raids of nomads from steppe regions (Bobrovsky, 2002). Modern vegetation and soils in the area of the Kaluzhskiye Zaseki Nature Reserve were intensively investigated during the last decades (Bobrovsky and Khanina, 2001; Smirnova et al., 2017); however, no palaeoecological studies have been undertaken.

In the present study we reconstructed vegetation and environmental changes based on multi-proxy data (pollen, plant macrofossil, loss on ignition, microscopic and macroscopic charcoal) from a forest peatland in the southern part of the Kaluzhskiye Zaseki Nature Reserve. This study aims to: (1) contribute to the understanding of the late Holocene forest dynamics in a poorly-investigated region of the East European Plain, (2) determine the beginning of crop farming and cattle grazing in the forest and, (3) detect the role of climatic and anthropogenic factors in vegetation changes and fire regime during the last 4200 years.

Section snippets

Study area

The State Nature Reserve, Kaluzhskiye Zaseki, is in the Ul'anovo district of the Kaluga region in the north-western part of the Mid-Russian uplands (Fig. 1). This study focused on the southern part of the Reserve. The landscape of the area is a plain with hills that are 150–250 m above sea level and a maximum elevation of 275 m densely dissected by gullies and ravines. Pre-Quaternary deposits are represented by Early Cretaceous clays, sands and sandstones. Quaternary deposits are 10–20 m thick

Materials and methods

The peat cores from the peatland were extracted using a Russian peat corer (diameter 50 mm, length 50 cm) during a field campaign in August of 2016. The peat deposits were described, photographed and sub-sampled for plant macrofossil (continuous sampling, sample thickness 2 cm), pollen (sample interval 1 cm) and macro-charcoal analysis (continuous sampling, sample thickness 1 cm) and loess on ignition (sample thickness 1 cm, sampling interval 1 cm).

Five bulk peat samples from the peat core and

Chronology and rates of sedimentation

The deposits in the studied local depression were 90 cm thick and consisted of two stratigraphic layers (90–70 cm – gittija, 70–0 cm – peat), separated by a distinct charcoal layer. The organogenic deposits were underlaid by silt with clay. The accumulation of organogenic deposits began about 4200 cal yr BP (Table 1). The sedimentation rate of gyttja was 0.15 mm yr−1. Radiocarbon dating of the basal sample of the peat layer showed that peat accumulation began around 3000 cal yr BP. Based on the

Discussion

The results obtained from pollen, plant macrofossils, LOI and macro-charcoal analysis from the peatland Mochulya allowed us to reconstruct vegetation dynamics influenced by climate change and human impacts over the last 4200 years (Fig. 6). Reconstructions of the mean annual temperatures and precipitation using the Modern Analogue Technique by pollen data and water table depth by testate amoebae data from peatland Klukva (Novenko et al., 2015) located 70 km south-east from the study area were

Conclusions

A 4200-year multi-proxy record from the Mochulya peatland located in the Kaluzhskiye Zaseki Natural Reserve allowed us to suggest the following:

  • 1)

    Broadleaved forests of Quercus, Ulmus, and Tilia were the primary vegetation of this area during whole considered period. Despite significant anthropogenic influence during the Late Holocene and the recent past, fragments of these forests still exist in the study area until present day.

  • 2)

    The southern border of the Picea geographical range was located

Acknowledgements

This study was supported by a grant from the Russian Science Foundation (Grant 16-17-10045). We thank Logan Berner and Carley Lowe at EcoSpatial Services for technical and English language editing.

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