Search

Depth to water table (DWT, the depth from the water surface to the top of the peat surface) is one of the most important environmental variables related to the habitat types and distribution of vegetation within a subalpine peatland. The distribution of phytolith assemblages and basic environmental data from 43 surface soil samples with significant ecological and hydrological gradients were investigated to generate transfer functions for quantitative reconstruction of paleoenvironmental changes in Dajiuhu peatland, central China. Detrended correspondence analysis (DCA) and redundancy analysis (RDA) were employed to explore the relationship between main environmental variables and phytolith morphotypes and distributions. Our results indicate that the spatial distribution of phytoliths was significantly correlated with the DWT (25% variance), total organic carbon (TOC, 10% variance) and magnetic susceptibility (χ, 7% variance). We established the transfer functions for the significant variables based on modern analogue technique (MAT), weighted averaging techniques (WA) and weighted averaging partial least squares (WA-PLS), and model performance was assessed using bootstrap cross-validation. The high correspondence of the predicted DWT results based on phytolith-environment calibration data with observed data reflects that the phytolith-based WA-PLS is a reliable effective calibration method for the quantitative DWT reconstruction of ombrotrophic (rain-fed) subalpine peatland. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In order to explore the impacts of past climate changes on the origin and evolution of Lake Poyang, the biggest freshwater lake in China, eight periods of palaeoenvironmental changes were constructed to depict the history of climate change over the past 3500 years based on the palynological records and carbon isotopic excursions. The climate regime was associated with the presence of a deciduous and evergreen broad-leaved forest/a mixed needle broad-leaved forest and strong/weak solar variability. Palaeohydrology change reconstructed by the percentage of aquatics and stable carbon isotopes demonstrated that the wet episode was associated with the developed lacustrine facies and enhanced El Niño–Southern Oscillation (ENSO) activities. The presence of the united open lake (Lake Poyang) during 2000–1200 cal. a BP was linked to a long wet period caused by the strong ENSO activities. At the decadal-centennial timescales, climate changes together with the ENSO activities might have played a great role on the regional hydrological condition and sedimentary evolution in southern Lake Poyang. The correlations of the palaeotemperature and palaeohydrology with the multi-proxy data from the Northern Hemisphere all suggest that palaeotemperature change with the monsoon intensity is linked to the solar variations, but palaeohydrology change has a striking consistency with the ENSO activities. The distinct hydrothermal diversification (warm-wet, warm-dry, cold-wet, cold-dry) revealed by the palaeotemperature and palaeohydrology changes will provide important clues about the origin and evolution of Lake Poyang in the Holocene and a better understanding of the interactions between solar radiation, ENSO activity and lake deposition in the middle Yangtze River Valley. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The last glacial–interglacial climate transition in East Asia was characterized by an intensified monsoon, but knowledge about hydrological responses at a regional scale during this transitional period is limited. Here we provide a novel lipid-based paleohydrological record for this period from the Dajiuhu peat deposit, central China. High water levels and persistent wet conditions during the Younger Dryas (12.5–11.6 ka) and the early Holocene (10.5–9.9 ka) were inferred on the basis of enrichments of sterenes, a group of unstable intermediate diagenetic products derived from biogenic sterols that are most likely preserved under a waterlogged peatland surface. These two wet intervals were accompanied by temperature decreases indicated by an increase in pollen abundance from cold favoring conifer trees and a decrease in total hardwood tree pollen. This cold and wet climate pattern, which is different from the concordant cold-dry pattern documented in north China, was probably caused by the regional influence of the western Pacific subtropical high on the residence time of the Meiyu rainband in the middle and lower reaches of the Yangtze River Valley. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]