TY  - JOUR
A1  - Tian, Fang
A1  - Cao, Xianyong
A1  - Dallmeyer, Anne
A1  - Lohmann, Gerrit
A1  - Zhang, Xu
A1  - Ni, Jian
A1  - Andreev, Andrei
A1  - Anderson, Patricia M.
A1  - Lozhkin, Anatoly V.
A1  - Bezrukova, Elena
A1  - Rudaya, Natalia
A1  - Xu, Qinghai
A1  - Herzschuh, Ulrike
T1  - Biome changes and their inferred climatic drivers in northern and eastern continental Asia at selected times since 40 cal ka BP
JF  - Vegetation History and Archaeobotany
N2  - Recent global warming is pronounced in high-latitude regions (e.g. northern Asia), and will cause the vegetation to change. Future vegetation trends (e.g. the "arctic greening") will feed back into atmospheric circulation and the global climate system. Understanding the nature and causes of past vegetation changes is important for predicting the composition and distribution of future vegetation communities. Fossil pollen records from 468 sites in northern and eastern Asia were biomised at selected times between 40 cal ka bp and today. Biomes were also simulated using a climate-driven biome model and results from the two approaches compared in order to help understand the mechanisms behind the observed vegetation changes. The consistent biome results inferred by both approaches reveal that long-term and broad-scale vegetation patterns reflect global- to hemispheric-scale climate changes. Forest biomes increase around the beginning of the late deglaciation, become more widespread during the early and middle Holocene, and decrease in the late Holocene in fringe areas of the Asian Summer Monsoon. At the southern and southwestern margins of the taiga, forest increases in the early Holocene and shows notable species succession, which may have been caused by winter warming at ca. 7 cal ka bp. At the northeastern taiga margin (central Yakutia and northeastern Siberia), shrub expansion during the last deglaciation appears to prevent the permafrost from thawing and hinders the northward expansion of evergreen needle-leaved species until ca. 7 cal ka bp. The vegetation-climate disequilibrium during the early Holocene in the taiga-tundra transition zone suggests that projected climate warming will not cause a northward expansion of evergreen needle-leaved species.
KW  - Siberia
KW  - China
KW  - Northern Asia
KW  - Model-data comparison
KW  - Pollen
KW  - Permafrost
KW  - Vegetation-climate disequilibrium
Y1  - 2018
U6  - https://doi.org/10.1007/s00334-017-0653-8
SN  - 0939-6314
SN  - 1617-6278
VL  - 27
IS  - 2
SP  - 365
EP  - 379
PB  - Springer
CY  - New York
ER  - 
TY  - JOUR
A1  - Herzschuh, Ulrike
A1  - Birks, H. John B.
A1  - Liu, Xingqi
A1  - Kubatzki, Claudia
A1  - Lohmann, Gerrit
T1  - Retracted: What caused the mid-Holocene forest decline on the eastern Tibet-Qinghai Plateau?
N2  - Aim: Atmospheric CO2 concentrations depend, in part, on the amount of biomass locked up in terrestrial vegetation. Information on the causes of a broad-scale vegetation transition and associated loss of biomass is thus of critical interest for understanding global palaeoclimatic changes. Pollen records from the north-eastern Tibet-Qinghai Plateau reveal a dramatic and extensive forest decline beginning c. 6000 cal. yr bp. The aim of this study is to elucidate the causes of this regional-scale change from high-biomass forest to low-biomass steppe on the Tibet-Qinghai Plateau during the second half of the Holocene. Location: Our study focuses on the north-eastern Tibet-Qinghai Plateau. Stratigraphical data used are from Qinghai Lake (3200 m a.s.l., 36 degrees 32'-37 degrees 15' N, 99 degrees 36'-100 degrees 47' E). Methods: We apply a modern pollen-precipitation transfer function from the eastern and north-eastern Tibet-Qinghai Plateau to fossil pollen spectra from Qinghai Lake to reconstruct annual precipitation changes during the Holocene. The reconstructions are compared to a stable oxygen-isotope record from the same sediment core and to results from two transient climate model simulations. Results: The pollen-based precipitation reconstruction covering the Holocene parallels moisture changes inferred from the stable oxygen-isotope record. Furthermore, these results are in close agreement with simulated model-based past annual precipitation changes. Main conclusions: In the light of these data and the model results, we conclude that it is not necessary to attribute the broad-scale forest decline to human activity. Climate change as a result of changes in the intensity of the East Asian Summer Monsoon in the mid-Holocene is the most parsimonious explanation for the widespread forest decline on the Tibet-Qinghai Plateau. Moreover, climate feedback from a reduced forest cover accentuates increasingly drier conditions in the area, indicating complex vegetation-climate interactions during this major ecological change.
Y1  - 2010
UR  - http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/cgi-bin/issn?DESCRIPTOR=PRINTISSN&VALUE=1466-822X
U6  - https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1466-8238.2009.00501.x
SN  - 1466-822X
ER  -