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Pollen-based quantitative land-cover reconstruction for northern Asia covering the last 40 ka cal BP
(2019)
We collected the available relative pollen productivity estimates (PPEs) for 27 major pollen taxa from Eurasia and applied them to estimate plant abundances during the last 40 ka cal BP (calibrated thousand years before present) using pollen counts from 203 fossil pollen records in northern Asia (north of 40 degrees N). These pollen records were organized into 42 site groups and regional mean plant abundances calculated using the REVEALS (Regional Estimates of Vegetation Abundance from Large Sites) model. Time-series clustering, constrained hierarchical clustering, and detrended canonical correspondence analysis were performed to investigate the regional pattern, time, and strength of vegetation changes, respectively. Reconstructed regional plant functional type (PFT) components for each site group are generally consistent with modern vegetation in that vegetation changes within the regions are characterized by minor changes in the abundance of PFTs rather than by an increase in new PFTs, particularly during the Holocene. We argue that pollen-based REVEALS estimates of plant abundances should be a more reliable reflection of the vegetation as pollen may overestimate the turnover, particularly when a high pollen producer invades areas dominated by low pollen producers. Comparisons with vegetation-independent climate records show that climate change is the primary factor driving land-cover changes at broad spatial and temporal scales. Vegetation changes in certain regions or periods, however, could not be explained by direct climate change, e.g. inland Siberia, where a sharp increase in evergreen conifer tree abundance occurred at ca. 7-8 ka cal BP despite an unchanging climate, potentially reflecting their response to complex climate-permafrost-fire-vegetation interactions and thus a possible long-term lagged climate response.
Ongoing and past biome transitions are generally assigned to climate and atmospheric changes (e.g. temperature, precipitation, CO2), but the major regional factors or factor combinations that drive vegetation change often remain unknown. Modelling studies applying ensemble runs can help to partition the effects of the different drivers. Such studies require careful validation with observational data. In this study, fossil pollen records from 741 sites in Europe, 728 sites in North America, and 418 sites in Asia (extracted from terrestrial archives including lake sediments) are used to reconstruct biomes at selected time slices between 40 cal ka BP (calibrated thousand years before present) and today. These results are used to validate Northern Hemisphere biome distributions (>30 degrees N) simulated by the biome model BIOME4 that has been forced with climate data simulated by a General Circulation model. Quantitative comparisons between pollen- and model-based results show a generally good fit at a broad spatial scale. Mismatches occur in central-arid Asia with a broader extent of grassland throughout the last 40 ka (likely due to the over-representation of Artemisia and Chenopodiaceae pollen) and in Europe with over-estimation of tundra at 0 cal ka BP (likely due to human impacts to some extent). Sensitivity analysis reveals that broad-scale biome changes follow the global signal of major postglacial temperature change, although the climatic variables vary in their regional and temporal importance. Temperature is the dominant variable in Europe and other rather maritime areas for biome changes between 21 and 14 ka, while precipitation is highly important in the arid inland regions of Asia and North America. The ecophysiological effect of changes in the atmospheric CO2-concentration has the highest impact during this transition than in other intervals. With respect to modern vegetation in the course of global warming, our findings imply that vegetation change in the Northern Hemisphere may be strongly limited by effective moisture changes, i.e. the combined effect of temperature and precipitation, particularly in inland areas. (C) 2019 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
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.
The large variety of atmospheric circulation systems affecting the eastern Asian climate is reflected by the complex Asian vegetation distribution. Particularly in the transition zones of these circulation systems, vegetation is supposed to be very sensitive to climate change. Since proxy records are scarce, hitherto a mechanistic understanding of the past spatio-temporal climate-vegetation relationship is lacking. To assess the Holocene vegetation change and to obtain an ensemble of potential mid-Holocene biome distributions for eastern Asia, we forced the diagnostic biome model BIOME4 with climate anomalies of different transient Holocene climate simulations performed in coupled atmosphere-ocean(-vegetation) models. The simulated biome changes are compared with pollen-based biome records for different key regions. In all simulations, substantial biome shifts during the last 6000 years are confined to the high northern latitudes and the monsoon-westerly wind transition zone, but the temporal evolution and amplitude of change strongly depend on the climate forcing. Large parts of the southern tundra are replaced by taiga during the mid-Holocene due to a warmer growing season and the boreal treeline in northern Asia is shifted northward by approx. 4 degrees in the ensemble mean, ranging from 1.5 to 6 degrees in the individual simulations, respectively. This simulated treeline shift is in agreement with pollen-based reconstructions from northern Siberia. The desert fraction in the transition zone is reduced by 21% during the mid-Holocene compared to pre-industrial due to enhanced precipitation. The desert-steppe margin is shifted westward by 5 degrees (1-9 degrees in the individual simulations). The forest biomes are expanded north-westward by 2 degrees, ranging from 0 to 4 degrees in the single simulations. These results corroborate pollen-based reconstructions indicating an extended forest area in north-central China during the mid-Holocene. According to the model, the forest-to-non-forest and steppe-to-desert changes in the climate transition zones are spatially not uniform and not linear since the mid-Holocene.
Temporal and spatial stability of the vegetation climate relationship is a basic ecological assumption for pollen-based quantitative inferences of past climate change and for predicting future vegetation. We explore this assumption for the Holocene in eastern continental Asia (China, Mongolia). Boosted regression trees (BRT) between fossil pollen taxa percentages (Abies, Artemisia, Betula, Chenopodiaceae, Cyperaceae, Ephedra, Picea, Pinus, Poaceae and Quercus) and climate model outputs of mean annual precipitation (P-ann) and mean temperature of the warmest month (Mt(wa)) for 9 and 6 ka (ka = thousand years before present) were set up and results compared to those obtained from relating modern pollen to modern climate. Overall, our results reveal only slight temporal differences in the pollen climate relationships. Our analyses suggest that the importance of P-ann compared with Mt(wa) for taxa distribution is higher today than it was at 6 ka and 9 ka. In particular, the relevance of P-ann for Picea and Pinus increases and has become the main determinant. This change in the climate tree pollen relationship parallels a widespread tree pollen decrease in north-central China and the eastern Tibetan Plateau. We assume that this is at least partly related to vegetation climate disequilibrium originating from human impact. Increased atmospheric CO2 concentration may have permitted the expansion of moisture-loving herb taxa (Cyperaceae and Poaceae) during the late Holocene into arid/semi-arid areas. We furthermore find that the pollen climate relationship between north-central China and the eastern Tibetan Plateau is generally similar, but that regional differences are larger than temporal differences. In summary, vegetation climate relationships in China are generally stable in space and time, and pollen-based climate reconstructions can be applied to the Holocene. Regional differences imply the calibration-set should be restricted spatially.
A comprehensive understanding of the regional vegetation responses to long-term climate change will help to forecast Earth system dynamics. Based on a new well-dated pollen data set from Kanas Lake and a review on the published pollen records in and around the Altai Mountains, the regional vegetation dynamics and forcing mechanisms are discussed. In the Altai Mountains, the forest optimum occurred during 10-7ka for the upper forest zone and the tree line decline and/or ecological shifts were caused by climatic cooling from around 7ka. In the lower forest zone, the forest reached an optimum in the middle Holocene, and then increased openness of the forest, possibly caused by both climate cooling and human activities, took place in the late Holocene. In the lower basins or plains around the Altai Mountains, the development of protograssland or forest benefited from increasing humidity in the middle to late Holocene. Plain Language Summary In the Altai Mountains and surrounding area of central Asia, the previous studies of the Holocene paleovegetation and paleoclimate studies did not discuss the different ecological limiting factors for the vegetation in high mountains and low-elevation areas due to limited data. With accumulating fossil pollen data and surface pollen data, it is possible to understand better the geomorphological effect on the vegetation and discrepancies of vegetation/forest responses to large-scale climate forcing, and it is also possible to get reliable quantitative reconstructions of climate. Here our new pollen data and review on the published fossil pollen data will help us to look into the past climate change and vertical evolution of vegetation in this important area of the Northern Hemisphere. Based on our study, it can be concluded that the growth of taiga forest in the wetter areas may be promoted under a future warmer climate, while the forest in the relatively dry areas is liable to decline, and the different vegetation dynamics will contribute to future high-resolution coupled vegetation-climate model for Earth system modelling.
Proxy-based reconstructions and modeling of Holocene spatiotemporal precipitation patterns for China and Mongolia have hitherto yielded contradictory results indicating that the basic mechanisms behind the East Asian Summer Monsoon and its interaction with the westerly jet stream remain poorly understood. We present quantitative reconstructions of Holocene precipitation derived from 101 fossil pollen records and analyse them with the help of a minimal empirical model. We show that the westerly jet-stream axis shifted gradually southward and became less tilted since the middle Holocene. This was tracked by the summer monsoon rain band resulting in an early-Holocene precipitation maximum over most of western China, a mid-Holocene maximum in north-central and northeastern China, and a late-Holocene maximum in southeastern China. Our results suggest that a correct simulation of the orientation and position of the westerly jet stream is crucial to the reliable prediction of precipitation patterns in China and Mongolia.
The climate conditions during Marine Isotope Stage (MIS) 3 were similar to present-day conditions, but whether humidity then exceeded present levels is debated, and the driving mechanisms of palaeoclimate evolution since MIS 3 remain unclear. Here, we use pollen data from Wulagai Lake, Inner Mongolia, to reconstruct vegetation and climate changes since the middle MIS 3. The steppe biome is reconstructed as the first dominant biome and the desert biome as the second, and the results show that the vegetation was steppe over the last 43,800 years. Poaceae, Artemisia, Caryophyllaceae and Humulus were abundant from middle to late MIS 3, indicating humid climate conditions. As drought-tolerant species such as Hippophae, Nitraria and Chenopodiaceae spread during MIS 2, the climate became arid. The Holocene is characterized by the dominance of steppe with mixed coniferous-broadleaved forests in the Greater Hinggan Range, and the desert biome retains high affinity scores, indicating that the climate was semi-arid. The climate from middle to late MIS 3 was wetter than in the Holocene; this shift was related to changes in the Northern Hemisphere's solar insolation and ice volume. The humid conditions during MIS 3 were attributed to strong ice–albedo feedback, which led to evaporation that was less than the precipitation. The enhanced evaporation caused by increased solar insolation and decreased ice volume might have exceeded the precipitation during the Holocene and resulted in low effective humidity in the Wulagai Lake basin.
A total of 271 pollen records were selected from a large collection of both raw and digitized pollen spectra from eastern continental Asia (70 degrees-135 degrees E and 18 degrees-55 degrees N). Following pollen percentage recalculations, taxonomic homogenization, and age-depth model revision, the pollen spectra were interpolated at a 500-year resolution and a taxonomically harmonized and temporally standardized fossil pollen dataset established with 226 pollen taxa, covering the last 22 cal lea. Of the 271 pollen records, 85% were published since 1990, with reliable chronologies and high temporal resolutions; of these, 50% have raw data with complete pollen assemblages, ensuring the quality of this dataset The pollen records available for each 500-year time slice are well distributed over all main vegetation types and climatic zones of the study area, making their pollen spectra suitable for paleovegetation and paleoclimate research. Such a dataset can be used as an example for the development of similar datasets for other regions of the world.