ORIGINAL PAPER Reconstructing Lake Onego evolution during and after the Late Weichselian glaciation with special reference to water volume and area estimations M. Zobkov . M. Potakhin . D. Subetto . A. Tarasov Received: 13 March 2018 / Accepted: 19 March 2019 Ó Springer Nature B.V. 2019 Abstract GIS-based reconstructions of Lake Onego development in the Late Pleistocene and the Holocene are presented. Reconstructions originated from the ideas of the Lake Onego depression deglaciation model proposed by I. N. Demidov and the isobase data of E. I. Devyatova. Twelve digital paleogeographic maps were developed and now are available on-line. The reconstructions for different time periods were unified, had a spatial resolution 90 m and a strict geographic conjunction. Paleogeographic maps were verified in relation to hand-drawing images of I. N. Demidov and E. I. Devyatova and by matching lake shoreline with a position of archaeological sites both in qualitative and quantitative manner. Area, volume, maximum, mean depth and dynamics of water fluctu- ation of Lake Onego was determined at twelve stages of its development. The discrepancies in ice-marginal positions and time scales were found to be major factors affecting the area and volume uncertainties between present and previous studies. Awareness of the lake’s shoreline position allows us to determine areas where human settlement was possible, which increases our chances of discovering new archaeolog- ical sites. Keywords Lake Onego Á Lake Onega Á Morphometric characteristics Á GIS reconstruction Á Late Pleistocene Á Holocene Introduction After the last glaciation maximum the ice sheet retreating reshaped the landscape cardinally, the formation and development of large proglacial lakes caused a series of changes in regional climate (Krinner et al. 2004), global ocean-climate system (Bjo ¨ rck et al. 1996; Jakobsson et al. 2007) and early human history as a result (Boyd et al. 2003). The most well-studied ice-lakes are Glacial Lake Missoula (Baker and Bunker 1985), Glacial Lake Agassiz (Thorleifson 1996) and Glacial Lake Algonquin (Schaetzl et al. 2016) in North America, Baltic Ice Lake (BIL) Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (https://doi.org/10.1007/s10933-019-00075-3) con- tains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users. M. Zobkov (&) Á M. Potakhin Á D. Subetto Northern Water Problem Institute of the Karelian Research Center of the RAS, Petrozavodsk, Russia e-mail: duet@onego.ru D. Subetto Herzen State Pedagogical University of Russia, Saint-Petersburg, Russia A. Tarasov Institute of Language, Literature and History of the Karelian Research Center of the RAS, Petrozavodsk, Russia e-mail: taleksej@mail.ru 123 J Paleolimnol https://doi.org/10.1007/s10933-019-00075-3