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High-resolution mineral magnetic and pollen records from overlapping piston cores from Lake Xiarinur (42°37′N, 115°28′E) document detailed changes in environment and vegetation since the last deglaciation in the Hunshandake Sandy Land, Inner Mongolia. The formation of Lake Xiarinur commenced during the Bølling-Allerød warming, as reflected by an abrupt shift in sedimentary facies from eolian sands to lacustrine sediments at a core depth of 3.5 m (~14.1 cal. kyr BP). The pollen records demonstrate that desert vegetation with sparse herbs occurred before 14.1 cal. kyr BP, which was succeeded by meadow grassland vegetation from ~14.1 -13.3 cal. kyr BP (the Bølling -Allerød). A dramatic decrease in pollen concentration occurred between ~13.3 and 11.7 cal. kyr BP corresponding to the Younger Dryas. The remarkable increases in pollen and Pediastrum concentrations at ~11.7 cal. kyr BP suggest that the environment began to ameliorate, and the most humid conditions prevailed until ~8.5 cal. kyr BP. The maxima of magnetic concentrationdependent and magnetic-grain-size-dependent parameters, together with high pollen concentrations, between ~10 and 9 cal. kyr BP are interpreted as a brief interval of high annual precipitation. Our results indicate a stepwise decrease in effective moisture in the mid-Holocene and an accelerated drying trend in the late Holocene, characteristics typical of an East Asian summer monsoon-influenced region. The broad similarities between our data and other lake records from central-eastern Inner Mongolia, well-dated speleothem δ 18 O records from southern and central China, and summer insolation at 45°N, support the idea that vegetation and climate changes in the Hunshandake Sandy Land were controlled mainly by fluctuations in the response of the East Asian monsoon to Northern Hemisphere summer insolation.

The scarcity of reliable paleomagnetic secular variation (PSV) records from East Asia especially from low‐latitude regions impedes better understanding of global PSV mechanisms. Here we report on a radiocarbon‐dated Holocene PSV record from a composite ~6.7‐m‐long core collected from the high‐sedimentation‐rate Huguangyan Maar Lake (HML) in subtropical‐tropical South China. Rock magnetic results demonstrate that the natural remanent magnetization resides in single‐domain magnetite. Alternating field demagnetization experiments at 1‐cm spacing on u‐channel samples reveal six distinct inclination highs at ~7,500 BCE, ~5,100 BCE, ~4,600 BCE, ~3,600–3,400 BCE, ~1,600–1,200 BCE, and 600–800 CE; three inclination lows at ~4,800 BCE, ~600–300 BCE, and ~1,000–1,300 CE; and three eastward declination trends at ~3,600–3,200 BCE, ~2,600–2,400 BCE, and 400 BCE to 200 CE. The similarity between the HML PSV record and other independently dated records from East Asia and geomagnetic field models corroborates the robustness of our age model and Holocene PSV record. Strikingly, centennial‐ to millennial‐scale PSV features of the HML are comparable, within age uncertainties, with other Holocene records from Europe, North America, and Canada, suggesting that such directional patterns are likely to be hemispheric in scale. Although relative paleointensity data of HML are affected by environmental factors (e.g., organic matter diagenesis), the record still provides a regionally important new PSV reference curve whose conspicuous features may serve as stratigraphic markers for East Asian paleorecords.