First data on landscape evolution in the southern Kurile Islands at the Pleistocene-Holocene transition.

The article offers information on the landscape evolution in the Southern Kurile Islands, Russia during the transition from Pleistocene Epoch to Holocene period. According to the authors, the southern Kurile Islands is a portion of the former land bridge that connected the Lesser Kurile, Kunashir Island and Hokkaido islands in Japan. The later part of Pleistocene was characterized by short periods of climate fluctuations such as warming and cooling episodes that resulted to transformation of landscapes. The authors noted that the early middle Holocene's warm climate conditions have yielded dark coniferous forests up to the late Middle Holocene. However, in the late Holocene, there was a rapid landscape reorganization.