Unraveling the History of Siberia’s Landscapes: Research from the Siberian Branch of RAS

• Post by: Admin
• December 16, 2025
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Institute of Soil Science and Agrochemistry (Siberian Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences (SBRAS) is one of the centers for studying the history of Western Siberian landscapes. The biogeocenology laboratory of this institute has been using phytolith analysis for paleoenvironmental reconstruction for over 10 years.

The laboratory’s research focuses on several key areas:

• Identifying indicators of current climate change and modeling how the wetland landscapes of Western Siberia function under different climate scenarios.
• Studying the biological productivity and transformation processes occurring along the climatic and landscape boundaries across Siberia and the Urals.
• Investigating the unique stages and phases of soil formation across Siberia during the Pleistocene and Holocene epochs.
• Reconstructing paleo-landscape changes in Western Siberia and surrounding regions. This is done by analyzing a suite of microscopic fossils—such as plant silica particles (phytoliths), diatoms, sponges, spores, and pollen—from sediments dating back to the Pleistocene and Holocene periods.

 

The head of the laboratory is Nina Mironycheva-Tokareva, a Candidate of Biological Sciences. Her research interests span ecology, geobotany, biogeocenology, and soil science. Her current work focuses on understanding the structure and functioning of ecosystems in a relatively stable natural environment over long timescales. A key aspect of this research is investigating how the overall geometry of the landscape system and the ecosystems that compose it—specifically in steppe and wetland environments—influence these processes.

Natalia Lada earned her Candidate of Sciences degree (Ph.D. equivalent) in 2017 under the supervision of Nina Mironycheva-Tokareva. Her dissertation focused on the microbiomorphic complexes in the natural and agriculturally transformed soils of the lake landscapes in the Kulunda Steppe (Western Siberia). The primary method used in this research was phytolith analysis. A significant outcome of her work was the creation of an extensive collection of phytoliths from modern plants, which now serves as a key reference database for paleosol studies.

An important focus of this research group is the use of a comprehensive set of soil analysis methods to reconstruct the environmental conditions under which the soils were formed. This approach is showcased in one of the team’s most recent publications: Microbiomorphs of Soddy Solodic Planosol and Buried Organic-Accumulative Quasi-Clay Soil of West Siberia

(https://link.springer.com/article/10.1134/S1064229323602299).

A major contribution to introducing phytolith analysis into the work of the Biogeocenology Laboratory was made by Denis Gavrilov (1983-2021), who we tragically lost during the COVID-19 pandemic. We featured his research in our post abaut “The Russian Association of Phytolith Researchers (RAP)”: https://phytoliths.org/the-russian-association-of-phytolith-researchers/.