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 significantly. The vegetation decline since 6.5 cal ka BP has likely induced a regional albedo change and aerosol increase. Further comparison with paleoclimate and paleovegetation dynamics in South China reproduced the regional cooling effect of vegetation cover decline in North China modelled in previous work. Our discussion demonstrates that, instead of reconstructing vegetation type from a single site, reconstructing quantitative regional vegetation cover could offer a broader understanding of regional vegetation-climate feedback.