Uncovering Holocene climate fluctuations and ancient conifer populations: Insights from a high-resolution multi-proxy record from Northern Finland

A series of abrupt climate events linked to circum-North Atlantic meltwater forcing have been recognised in Holocene paleoclimate data. To address the paucity of proxy records able to characterise robustly the regional impacts of these events, we retrieved a sub-centennial resolution, well-dated core sequence from Lake Kuutsjärvi, northeast Finland. By analysing a range of paleo-environmental proxies (pollen, plant sedimentary ancient DNA, plant macrofossils, conifer stomata, and non-pollen palynomorphs), and supported with proxy-based paleotemperature and moisture reconstructions, we unravel a well-defined sequence of vegetation and climate dynamics over the early-to-middle Holocene. The birch-dominated pioneer vegetation stage was intersected by two transient tree-cover decrease events at 10.4 and 10.1 thousand years ago (ka), likely representing a two-pronged signal of the 10.3 ka climate event. Our data also show a clear signal of the 8.2 ka climate event, previously not well recorded in the European Arctic, with a collapse of the pine-birch forest and replacement by juniper developing in tight synchrony with Greenland isotopic proxies over 8.4–8.0 ka. Supported by climate modelling, severe winter cooling rather than summer might have been driving vegetation disruptions in the early Holocene. The Kuutsjärvi data indicate an early arrival of Norway spruce (Picea abies) by 9.2 ka (pollen, DNA, and stoma finds), as well as the first evidence for Holocene presence of larch (Larix) in Finland, with pollen finds dating to 9.6–5.9 ka.