text: Diatom species in polar and subpolar marine environments commonly display a narrow range of ecological preferences, in terms of sea surface temperature and sea ice conditions. An established relationship between diatom assemblages and their ecological preferences in surface sediments, could, therefore, be applied to sediments below the surface. For example, statistical analyses of diatom in the Antarctic Peninsula surface sediments have established diatom assemblages indicative to sea ice and open marine conditions, and these assemblages have been used as proxies for glacial and interglacial stages respectively in the Holocene sediments.
  Diatom studies of lacustrine sediments in Siberia and Mongolia demonstrate a close relationship during the last glacial maximum between planktonic diatom diversity and paleoclimate through the correlation with oxygen isotope records, which represent global ice volume changes.