Late Holocene isotope hydrology of Lake Qinghai, NE Tibetan Plateau: effective moisture variability and atmospheric circulation changes

Henderson, Andrew C.G.; Holmes, Jonathan A.; Leng, Melanie J.

doi:10.1016/j.quascirev.2010.05.019

Cited by 110 publications

(80 citation statements)

References 43 publications

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“…4) and which was also detected in the pollen record from the Dunde ice-core (Liu et al, 1998). An increase in effective moisture during the cool LIA has been deduced from carbonate oxygen isotopes from Lake Qinghai, and is considered to be due to a reduction in evaporation caused by colder air temperatures and an increase in the relative importance of moisture-bearing westerlies (Henderson et al, 2010). In addition, our Artemisia-based timeseries analysis reveals a significant periodicity of 1512 years which is consistent with the 1500 year "Bond Cycle" from the North Atlantic (Bond et al, 2001).…”

Section: Underlying Climatic Mechanismssupporting

confidence: 80%

“…Samples from seven different levels were processed and dated at the Radiocarbon Laboratory, University of Tokyo, Japan (Table 1). In addition, 210 Pb and 137 Cs radiometric-dating results from the short core were used to determine the "Carbon Reservoir Effect", which has been commonly reported from lake sediments on the Tibetan Plateau (Fontes et al, 1996;Shen et al, 2005;Morrill et al, 2006;Henderson et al, 2010), yielding a Carbon Reservoir Effect of about 3400 years. All 14 C ages were then corrected for this effect, calibrated using the Calib 5.1 program and the INTCAL04 calibration data-set (Reimer et al, 2004), and interpolated and extrapolated to obtain estimated ages for each horizon.…”

Section: Coring Chronology and Sedimentary Proxy Analysesmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…4c). Rather stable environmental conditions have been reported from nearby lakes on the basis of their pollen assemblages (Liu et al, 2002;Shen et al, 2005;Zhao et al, 2007;Wischnewski et al, 2011;, submitted for publication) and geochemical proxies (Ji et al, 2005;Mischke et al, 2009;Henderson et al, 2010).…”

Section: From 2400 To 900 Cal a Bp: Gradual Decrease In Vegetation Comentioning

confidence: 99%

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Temporally changing drivers for late-Holocene vegetation changes on the northern Tibetan Plateau

Wang

Liu

Herzschuh

et al. 2012

Palaeogeography, Palaeoclimatology, Palaeoecology

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a b s t r a c t a r t i c l e i n f oFossil pollen records have been widely used as indicators of past changes in vegetation and variations in climate. The driving mechanisms behind these vegetation changes have, however, remained unclear. In order to evaluate vegetation changes that have occurred in the northern part of the Tibetan Plateau and the possible drivers behind these changes, we have applied a moving-window Redundancy Analysis (RDA) to high resolution (10-15 years) pollen and sedimentary data from Lake Kusai covering the last 3770 years. Our analyses reveal frequent fluctuations in the relative abundances of alpine steppe and alpine desert components. The sedimentary proxies (including total organic carbon content, total inorganic carbon content, and "end-member" indices from grain-size analyses) that explain statistically some of the changes in the pollen assemblage vary significantly with time, most probably reflecting multiple underlying driving processes. Climate appears to have had an important influence on vegetation changes when conditions were relatively wet and stable. However, a gradual decrease in vegetation cover was identified after 1500 cal a BP, after which the vegetation appears to have been affected more by extreme events such as dust-storms or fluvial erosion than by general climatic trends. Furthermore, pollen spectra over the last 600 years are shown by Procrustes analysis to be statistically different from those recovered from older samples, which we attribute to increased human impact that resulted in unprecedented changes to the vegetation composition. Overall, changes in vegetation and climate on the northern part of the Tibetan Plateau appear to have roughly followed the evolution of the Asian Summer Monsoon. After taking into account the highly significant millennial (1512 years) periodicity revealed by time-series analysis, the regional vegetation and climate changes also show variations that appear to match variations in the mid-latitude westerlies.

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Section: Underlying Climatic Mechanismssupporting

confidence: 80%

Section: Coring Chronology and Sedimentary Proxy Analysesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: From 2400 To 900 Cal a Bp: Gradual Decrease In Vegetation Comentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

Temporally changing drivers for late-Holocene vegetation changes on the northern Tibetan Plateau

Wang

Liu

Herzschuh

et al. 2012

Palaeogeography, Palaeoclimatology, Palaeoecology

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“…Whether or not this reservoir effect can be applied to all fossil lacustrine sediments in onshore regions remains an open question, but it may serve as a potential error. As reservoir effects in lake sediments can vary spatially, e.g., reports on Qinghai Lake (Henderson et al, 2010), Hala Lake , and other locations (Hou et al, 2012), we have to assume similar conditions here, taking into account the fact that erosion of old lake deposits from onshore regions down to the Paiku Co basin may contribute to this error to an unpredictable extent. Hence, we did not include any reservoir error in any of the reported ages.…”

Section: Chronological Framementioning

confidence: 99%

Morphodynamics and lake level variations at Paiku Co, southern Tibetan Plateau, China

Wünnemann

Yan

2015

Geomorphology

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“…and probable contributions of snow or glacial melt water input from nearby high-elevation mountains (e.g. Liu et al, 2008a;Henderson et al, 2010;Wang et al, 2013).…”

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confidence: 99%

Holocene climate controls on water isotopic variations on the northeastern Tibetan Plateau

Liu

Wang

et al. 2016

Chemical Geology

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On the Tibetan Plateau, applications of δD and δ 18O values in paleoclimate studies tend to be complicated due to multiple processes influencing isotopic compositions in paleoclimatic archives. In this study, isotopic compositions of modern waters in the eastern Qaidam Basin on the northeastern Tibetan Plateau, and δD values of n-fatty acids (n-FA δD) from a sediment core at Hurleg Lake were systematically analyzed to infer hydroclimate controls during the Holocene. The modern water isotopic results show a major contribution of snowmelt water originating from high-elevation mountains to the north of the Qaidam Basin via river and groundwater discharge, and the importance of evaporation in affecting lake water budget in this region. n-C 26 FA δD values tend to be more negative at millennial-scale warm-dry periods during the Holocene, and vice versa, opposite to what is commonly expected. Assisted with modern water isotopic results, we infer amplified contribution of snowmelt water to the soil water around this open lake system at warm-dry periods. Meanwhile, changes in n-C 16 FA δD values at Hurleg Lake reflect the evolution of isotopic compositions of lake water, thus we use the isotopic difference between n-C 26 and n-C 16 FA (ΔD C16-C26 ) to infer hydroclimate and evaporation variations in this region. Based on our data, relatively low n-C 26 FA δD and n-C 16 FA δD values at 10-6 cal ka BP indicate large contribution of snowmelt water into the lake during the Holocene Climate Optimum. After 6 cal ka BP, changes in evaporation became the major control on lake hydrology and led to larger fluctuations of ΔD C16-C26 . Our study highlights the importance of systematic analysis on modern processes before using stable isotopes for paleoclimate reconstructions, and demonstrates that δD difference between long-chain and short-chain n-FA might be an effective way to better understand the controlling factor of hydrological variations in a climatic complex region like the Tibetan Plateau.

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Late Holocene isotope hydrology of Lake Qinghai, NE Tibetan Plateau: effective moisture variability and atmospheric circulation changes

Cited by 110 publications

References 43 publications

Temporally changing drivers for late-Holocene vegetation changes on the northern Tibetan Plateau

Temporally changing drivers for late-Holocene vegetation changes on the northern Tibetan Plateau

Morphodynamics and lake level variations at Paiku Co, southern Tibetan Plateau, China

Holocene climate controls on water isotopic variations on the northeastern Tibetan Plateau

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