Pollen–vegetation relationship based on lake surface sediments of arid and semi-arid northern China; considerations and limitations.

In this paper, we investigated pollen assemblages of 92 lake center surface sediments of arid and semi-arid northern China to statistically disclose the pollen–vegetation relationships at the regional scale and explore considerations and limitations for lacustrine pollen-based reconstructions. As a result, the Principal component analysis (PCA), the Indicator species analysis, the Discriminate analysis (DA), the Random forest (RF), and the Supportive vector machine (SVM) generally reveal positive correlations between pollen assemblages and vegetation types or ecotones and suggests capabilities of pollen to represent regional vegetation and climate. However, the DA, RF, and SVM reveal that the samples of desert steppe, typical steppe, and meadow steppe cannot be differentiated by pollen assemblages, suggesting weaknesses to represent regional vegetation and climate. Mental test analyses of pollen assemblages and azonal vegetation of the dune desert and the Gobi desert yield better correlations than that of regional vegetation, suggesting that the pollen of azonal vegetation distort the regional pollen–vegetation relationships and thus weaken the capabilities to represent regional vegetation and climate. Our results present considerations and limitations for pollen-based past vegetation and climate reconstructions and provide references for interpretations of lacustrine fossil pollen records in arid and semi-arid northern China. • Lake surface sediment pollen–vegetation revealed general correlation relationships. • Azonal vegetation pollen bias regional pollen–vegetation relationships in desert. • Lake sediment pollen assemblages represent azonal vegetation better in desert. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]