Quantifying regional vegetation cover variability in North China during the Holocene: implications for climate feedback.

ABSTRACT: Validating model simulations of vegetation-climate feedback needs information not only on changes in past vegetation types as reconstructed by palynologists, but also on other proxies such as vegetation cover. We present here a quantitative regional vegetation cover reconstruction for North China during the Holocene. The reconstruction was based on 15 high-quality lake sediment profiles selected from 55 published sites in North China, along with their modern remote sensing vegetation index. We used the surface soil pollen percentage to build three pollen-vegetation cover transfer models, and used lake surface sediment pollen data to validate their accuracy. Our results showed that vegetation cover in North China increased slightly before its maximum at 6.5 cal ka BP and has since declined

SUBMITTER: Liu G 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC3748107 | biostudies-literature | 2013

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature