Landscapes and Landforms of Russian Arctic and Subarctic: History of Exploration and Current Knowledge (Editorial)

The Arctic, a vast area north of the Arctic Circle, remains poorly explored to this day. Even in the first quarter of the 21st century, there are many unvisited islands and coastal areas in high latitudes where no human has ever set foot. Meanwhile, it is in the Arctic that the keys to solving many important issues of modern geomorphology and paleogeography lie—problems of the spread, direction of movement, and chronology of glaciations, the age and spread of transgressions, the genesis of tabular ground ice and boulder loams, the nature of vertical tectonic movements, the age and distribution of paleoseismic dislocations, the mechanism and intensity of modern morphodynamic processes in the context of climate change, etc. Therefore, geomorphological studies in high latitudes are extremely important and will remain relevant for many years to come, despite the inaccessibility and high cost of expedition work.