After the end of the Mikulino interglacial, in connection with the rising cooling trend, the Scandinavian ice sheet began to form on the territory of Fennoscandia. Its development to the maximum boundaries was accompanied by the ice sheet advances and retreats that reflected the succession of colder and warmer climate phases over a long period, called the Valdaian (Weichselian, Vistulian) ice age.
The Scandinavian ice sheet did not reach its maximum simultaneously at different lobes. The age of the maximum boundary on becomes younger from west to east, which is associated with the paleoclimatic situation in the North of Eurasia due to the formation of an extra-continental climate. Climate continentality increased eastward along the periphery of the ice sheet.
These climate features and the ice sheet response determined the nature of glacial morphogenesis in the proglacial zone. The conditions for the formation of a peripheral ice sheet and an increase in the number of mudflows and the formation of glacial lakes were more favorable during the ice sheet degradation than its expansion. Therefore, the forms of active and dead ice, especially the terminal moraines and kames of different types, the valleys of marginal channels and outwash plains serve as the hallmarks of the stages of warming and degradation of ice sheets.

An analysis of the geological and geomorphological features of the formation and preservation of gold placers in the Pribelsky placer zone located in the central part of the Belsky intermountain depression in the Southern Urals revealed the following. Valley of River Belay within Belsky depression, inheriting a zone of the Zyuratkulsky deep break, has complex two-level structure. The upper tier is represented by a wide (up to 5 km) trough-like paleovalley with complexes of polygenic and polychronic Miocene-Pliocene formations, both preserved in deep (up to 20–37 m) erosion-karst depressions and in some places coming to the surface. In Beloretsky and Burzyansky prospective sites of these complexes gold-bearing was revealed. As a result of the Eopleistocene – Early Neopleistocene phase of the neo-tectonic uplift of the mountainous part of the Bashkir Urals and subsequent river incision into the bottom of the paleo-valley to a depth of 30 to 130 m, a complex of sediments of the lower tier of the modern Belay river valley was formed. Due to the incision and reworking of goldbearing formations of the upper tier, the weight contents of gold are also established in the braid deposits of the river Belay. It has been shown that the areas of paleo-valley river Belay with karst troughs-traps of placer gold associated with zones of increased fracturing and permeability at the junctions of the submeridional and secant transverse faults. Attention is also drawn to the sites of the inheritance of the paleo-valley by a modern network with a predicted greater concentration of metal in them, even if weakly gold-bearing loose formations.

The structure, parameters, causes and consequences of a large landslide with a volume of 24.5 million cubic meters on the steep slope of the Bureysky Reservoir in its narrow mountain region (Khabarovsky Krai) were established. The displacement of the earth masses occurred on December 11, 2018 at an air temperature below minus 30°C. It was revealed that the cause of the landslide was a combination of factors, such as high steepness of the slope, the presence of highly fractured rocks in a zone of tectonic crushing, melting permafrost and the flooding of the soil at the bottom of the slope. As a result of the displacement of the landslide, a dam with a length of 800 m and a height of up to 47 m above the water level was formed, dividing the reservoir into two isolated parts. Heterogeneity of the composition of the deposits of the landslide body, a significant part of which is permafrost, was revealed.
The landslide caused a tsunami wave, which spread along the reservoir for 11 km in in both directions along the Bureya River valley and for 3.2 km along the valley of the Sr. Sandar river located opposite the landslide. The maximum height of the wave splash reached 90 m in the narrow part of the valley in the middle reaches of the river Sr. Sandar. The wave completely destroyed the forest on an area of 300 hectares and washed away slope deposits at an area of about 100 hectares. On the slopes, numerous erosion furrows were formed up to 20 m long and up to 1.2 m deep. Now on a wall of failure collapses and small landslides became more active.
The role of anthropogenic factors in the formation of landslides is the warming effect of water on the frozen rocks at the base of the steep slope of the valley as a result of rising water levels when filling the reservoir Bureyskaya HPP.

The methodology was proposed for the distinguishing of geomorphological areas on the map of the surface slopes, created from SRTM by visualization tools. Such areas are considered as parts of the image that differ in the ratios of different slopes and their relative position in space (“textureˮ). The scheme of geomorphological zoning of the Upper Dnieper basin (left bank) was built. Forty geomorphological regions with an average area of about 2.25 km² were allocated. It was shown that the main internal differences of the topography in the region is consistent with the regional geomorphological zonation schemes based on traditional cartographic materials. Identified differences relate to the allocation of geomorphological areas of alluvial and glacio-fluvial plains corresponding to the wide sections of river valleys. Topographic differentiation was caused by neotectonic movements, geological structure, paleogeographic peculiarities of the Quaternary period. Information was provided about the differences of geomorphic terrain regions that are not available directly from SRTM data, in particular on the distribution of density of the river network.

Floodplain widening “Spasskoe” includes a portion of the Oka floodplain and its two tributaries, the Istya and Pronya rivers, with a total area of about 120 km². The floodplain in this part of the Oka valley was formed within a depression that was occupied by a lake about 30 thousand years ago and filled with lacustrine-alluvial sands that were preserved within the remnants of the first terrace above the floodplain. Overlaying floodplain alluvial facies with a thickness of 3.5 to 5.5 m occurred intermittently during the colder climate phases since the end of the Atlantic period of the Holocene to the present time. In relatively warm phases, floodplain sedimentation ceased due to the decrease of floods, and soil formation took place. ¹⁴C-dates, which record the stages of surface stabilization in periods from 400 to 3500 years ago were obtained for three buried soils. Formation of different generations of floodplain segments with levee-hollow to leveled topography occurred in the Subboreal and Subatlantic periods of the Holocene.

The relief of the Volga-Ural interfluve is considered, where the rivers in the mouths form “embedded” or blind deltas. These deltas terminate close to the Volga-Ural Sands. During spring snowmelt floods, large lakes appear at the mouths of rivers. Therefore, it is difficult to agree with the opinion that the rivers disconnected from the sea during the regression phases due to the low water levels in rivers. Sea regression led to the downcutting of the delta channels into the alluvial and marine deposits. Analysis of the outcrops, taking into account the coastal geomorphology and the impact of the sea level fluctuations on the coast has led to the conclusion that there was no deep Atelian regression and Great Early Khvalynian transgression. It was a Great Khazarian transgression, after which lagoon-transgressive terraces formed sequentially at the background of the gradual lowering of the Caspian Sea.
Positive oscillations of sea level led to the formation of lagoons, where the chocolate clays accumulated. All tributary rivers formed deltas that prograded into such lagoons. Therefore, Sea the rivers could not follow the coastline during the subsequent lowering of the Caspian Sea. The shallowing of the lagoons resulted in the drainage of the deltas. When the water level in the lagoons dropped, rivers cut in deltaic deposits and “embedded” or blind deltas were formed.

To determine the nature of the contribution of current tectonic processes to the formation of morphostructural ensembles is an important task. This can be done by comparing the morphostructure with the expected consequences of the impact of geodynamic systems. In the border area of the Baltic Shield and the Russian Plate, within the Circumbaltic zone of dislocations, there is a chain of recent graben depressions. The location of the depressions is determined by the tectonophysical patterns of dislocation sampling and favorable local structural conditions. Depression arose as areas of tension with the superpositional interaction of two subordinate horizontally oriented newest geodynamic systems – pressing the Baltic shield onto the Russian Plate and pushing the geological substrate at the point of their junction in the perpendicular direction. In the northern part of the White Sea Depression, the “visor” of the Karelian massif is approaching to the region of oncoming progressive stretching around the Kandalaksha graben. The superposition of these processes is clearly expressed in relief. Thus, the formation of morphostructures in the area is strongly influenced by the interaction of geodynamic systems.

Workshop on the development of a regional stratigraphic scheme of Quaternary deposits of the Altai-Sayan region passed in Novosibirsk on 22 and 23 November 2018. In its decisions it was noted that it is necessary to change previously adopted glacial and alluvial terrace stratigraphy of the Quaternary as not corresponding to the actual material. According to the new stratigraphic schemes, the Altai-Sayan mountain region experienced all glaciation in the Pleistocene, and each climate cycle corresponds to a single erosion-accumulative cycle. In accordance with the decisions of the workshop, the revision of Quaternary sections was held in Tuva and Khakassia on 18–31 May, 2019. It was established that the first and the second Late Pleistocene alluvial terraces are enclosed into polyfacial catafluvial unit, which individual facies were mistakenly interpreted as moraine in previous schemes. The name “Ulugbekskyˮ was proposed for this unit. Similar units in the Altai mountains and For-Altai Plains are catafluvial deposits dated to about 90 kyr BP. They were formed during the outburst of the Kurai-Chuya lake system. The formation of the Ulugbeksky deposits were associated with the outburst of the Darkhad Palaeolake that occurred 92–80 ka BP. This allows to correlate the Ulugbeksky unit in the Yenisei valley with the Saljarsky unit in the Altai mountains.

A vast body of geographical information about different countries, its assessment and criticism and creation of a scientific method are the main achievement in geography and geomorphology of outstanding German geographer Carl Ritter. He strove to formulate the tasks of geographic science, its place in the system of other branches of knowledge, its importance as a science that had its own philosophical meaning that not only “described” but also “explained.” In an effort to put geography on a new foundation and enrich it with a new spirit he created comparative geography and gave it a new name Erdkunde, Earth Science or physical geography. It became the title of his vast (10 volumes divided into 19 parts) work that covered Africa and Asia. He was interested in nature and history hence his treatment of the Earth’s surface as something living; each of the continents being an organism with typical features of its own, with qualities expressed by unique shorelines, relief, climate, flora and fauna as well as cultural development associated with natural conditions of human types or “species.” He was the first to define relief as plastics of Earh’s surface; he suggested that in mountain ranges (or countries) we should distinguish between main ridges and foothills, between ridges and watersheds, terraces and terrace scarps. His brilliant lectures at Berlin University invariably stirred up enthusiastic response from his audience while his works were highly appreciated by a chorus of his colleagues and criticized by lonely voices of the dissatisfied.