Finding karstic caves and rockshelters in the Inner Asian mountain corridor using predictive modelling and field survey.

ABSTRACT: The area of the Inner Asian Mountain Corridor (IAMC) follows the foothills and piedmont zones around the northern limits of Asia's interior mountains, connecting two important areas for human evolution: the Fergana valley and the Siberian Altai. Prior research has suggested the IAMC may have provided an area of connected refugia from harsh climates during the Pleistocene. To date, this region contains very few secure, dateable Pleistocene sites, but its widely available carbonate units present an opportunity for discovering cave sites, which generally preserve longer sequences and organic remains. Here we present two models for predicting karstic cave and rockshelter features in the Kazakh portion of the IAMC. The 2018 model used a combination of lithological data and unsupervised landform

SUBMITTER: Cuthbertson P 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7816991 | biostudies-literature | 2021

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature