TY  - JOUR
A1  - Zhang, Naimeng
A1  - Cao, Xianyong
A1  - Xu, Qinghai
A1  - Huang, Xiaozhong
A1  - Herzschuh, Ulrike
A1  - Shen, Zhongwei
A1  - Peng, Wei
A1  - Liu, Sisi
A1  - Wu, Duo
A1  - Wang, Jian
A1  - Xia, Huan
A1  - Zhang, Dongju
A1  - Chen, Fahu
T1  - Vegetation change and human-environment interactions in the Qinghai Lake Basin, northeastern Tibetan Plateau, since the last deglaciation
T2  - Catena
N2  - The nature of the interaction between prehistoric humans and their environment, especially the vegetation, has long been of interest. The Qinghai Lake Basin in North China is well-suited to exploring the interactions between prehistoric humans and vegetation in the Tibetan Plateau, because of the comparatively dense distribution of archaeological sites and the ecologically fragile environment. Previous pollen studies of Qinghai Lake have enabled a detailed reconstruction of the regional vegetation, but they have provided relatively little information on vegetation change within the Qinghai Lake watershed. To address the issue we conducted a pollen-based vegetation reconstruction for an archaeological site (YWY), located on the southern shore of Qinghai Lake. We used high temporal-resolution pollen records from the YWY site and from Qinghai Lake, spanning the interval since the last deglaciation (15.3 kyr BP to the present) to quantitatively reconstruct changes in the local and regional vegetation using Landscape Reconstruction Algorithm models. The results show that, since the late glacial, spruce forest grew at high altitudes in the surrounding mountains, while the lakeshore environment was occupied mainly by shrub-steppe. From the lateglacial to the middle Holocene, coniferous woodland began to expand downslope and reached the YWY site at 7.1 kyr BP. The living environment of the local small groups of Paleolithic-Epipaleolithic humans (during 15.3-13.1 kyr BP and 9-6.4 kyr BP) changed from shrub-steppe to coniferous forest-steppe. The pollen record shows no evidence of pronounced changes in the vegetation community corresponding to human activity. However, based on a comparison of the local and regional vegetation reconstructions, low values of biodiversity and a significant increase in two indicators of vegetation degradation, Chenopodiaceae and Rosaceae, suggest that prehistoric hunters-gatherers likely disturbed the local vegetation during 9.0-6.4 kyr BP. Our findings are a preliminary attempt to study human-environment interactions at Paleolithic-Epipaleolithic sites in the region, and they contribute to ongoing environmental archaeology research in the Tibetan Plateau.
KW  - Quantitative vegetation reconstruction
KW  - Local and regional vegetation
KW  - dynamics
KW  - Paleolithic-Epipaleolithic human-environment 
KW  - interactions
KW  - Northeastern Tibetan Plateau
Y1  - 2022
UR  - https://publishup.uni-potsdam.de/frontdoor/index/index/docId/64132
SN  - 0341-8162
SN  - 1872-6887
VL  - 210
PB  - Elsevier
CY  - Amsterdam
ER  -