The Laboratory of Evolutionary Geography was established in December 1971 as a group of specialists from the Department of Geomorphology at the Institute of Geography, focusing on Quaternary paleogeography. The founder and head of the laboratory was Andrei Velichko (1931–2015), a Soviet and Russian geographer-scientist, laureate of the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize as part of the IPCC, one of the most cited Russian geographers and leading researchers in Quaternary paleogeography worldwide.
Research topics of the laboratory:
The laboratory specializes in comprehensive reconstructions of environmental changes during the Quaternary based on its own field and laboratory research. Currently, the research focuses on the following issues:
- Reconstruction of flora and vegetation, and indirectly climate, during various periods of the Holocene (the current warm epoch) and the Pleistocene, based on palynological (pollen and spores) and paleocarpological analyses;
- Study of the history of fires using paleoanthracological methods;
- Reconstruction of the dynamics of the last and penultimate glaciations in northern Russia;
- Reconstruction of hydrological and paleogeographical events associated with glaciations in the Aral-Caspian-Black Sea region;
- Study of the loess-paleosol formation in Northern Eurasia;
- Paleohydrology of rivers (assessment of past changes in river discharge), history of river valley development during the Holocene and Pleistocene;
- Geoarchaeological research—reconstruction of local natural living conditions of prehistoric humans at sites from the early and middle Paleolithic to antiquity and the Middle Ages in various regions of the Russian Plain, the Caucasus, and the Pamirs;
- Luminescent (OSL, IRSL) and cosmogenic (10Be) methods of absolute geochronology (determining the age of deposits and rock formations).
Contacts
POSTAL ADDRESS:
119017 Moscow, Staromonetny Lane, Building 29, Institute of Geography (Russian Academy of Sciences), Laboratory of Evolutionary Geography
PHYSICAL ADDRESS:
Moscow, Gubkina Street, 3
CONTACTS:
Phone: +7 (495) 959-00-40
Fax: +7 (495) 959-00-33
Email: paleo_igras@igras.ru
Head of the Laboratory:
Andrei Panin, Dr. habil.
Scientific Secretary:
Natalia Naryshkina, Ph.D.
