Franz Josef Land: Rapid Changes in the Natural Environment during the Holocene

This paper is based on the fieldwork data obtained in 2012–2013 and the icebreaker observations made in 2021–2025. The 150-year period of geomorphological and paleogeographic studies carried out in the Franz Josef Land (FJL) archipelago has been reviewed. The archipelago was discovered by the Austrian–Hungarian expedition of J. Payer and K. Weyprecht on August 30, 1873. A few types of islands were identified in the course of the geomorphological analysis of the archipelago. A radiocarbon date array of 210 units obtained from whale bones, marine mollusks, driftwood, a few peat bogs, mostly sampled by the author, and from deer antlers, has been collected and analyzed. The date distribution in different objects makes it possible to identify a colder and more icy stage of 11 000–8000 radiocarbon years ago (yr BP) (known as the Rubini stage) and a warmer one 700–2500 yr BP (“the reindeer time,” according to M.G. Grosvald). The Holocene climatic optimum occurred between 6000 and 3000 yr BP, when reindeer herds lived in the area under consideration, glaciers were reduced considerably, and the ice-free period was longer. In this respect, the archipelago is drastically different from both Svalbard located to the west and the Severnaya Zemlya (Northern Land) and the New Siberian Islands located to the east, where the optimum was noticeably earlier. Then, during the cold spells of the Sedov (3000–2500 years ago) and Victoria (thirteenth–sixteenth centuries) stages, the glaciers expanded, the reindeer died, and the ice cover became thicker and lasted longer. At the end of the twentieth and beginning of the twenty-first centuries, the new climate warming caused the activation of thermal abrasion, cryogenic slope (landslides and solifluction), and mudflow processes (described for the first time in the archipelago). For the first time, seismic dislocations predicted in the 1970s have been discovered and described in several islands. Their age can be either Late Holocene (Scott–Keltie, Ziegler, and Apollonov islands) or Late Pleistocene–Early Holocene (McClintock Island). Such turbulent Holocene history of the FJL is due to its location in the Western Arctic region which is particularly sensitive to changes in the atmosphere–ocean system. The current situation is analogous to the coming Holocene climatic optimum.