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Projecting how the East Asian summer monsoon (EASM) rainfall will change with global warming is essential for human sustainability. Reconstructing Holocene climate can provide critical insight into its forcing and future variability. However, quantitative reconstructions of Holocene summer precipitation are lacking for tropical and subtropical China, which is the core region of the EASM influence. Here we present high-resolution annual and summer rainfall reconstructions covering the whole Holocene based on the pollen record at Xinjie site from the lower Yangtze region. Summer rainfall was less seasonal and ~ 30% higher than modern values at ~ 10–6 cal kyr BP and gradually declined thereafter, which broadly followed the Northern Hemisphere summer insolation. Over the last two millennia, however, the summer rainfall has deviated from the downward trend of summer insolation. We argue that greenhouse gas forcing might have offset summer insolation forcing and contributed to the late Holocene rainfall anomaly, which is supported by the TraCE-21 ka transient simulation. Besides, tropical sea-surface temperatures could modulate summer rainfall by affecting evaporation of seawater. The rainfall pattern concurs with stalagmite and other proxy records from southern China but differs from mid-Holocene rainfall maximum recorded in arid/semiarid northern China. Summer rainfall in northern China was strongly suppressed by high-northern-latitude ice volume forcing during the early Holocene in spite of high summer insolation. In addition, the El Niño/Southern Oscillation might be responsible for droughts of northern China and floods of southern China during the late Holocene. Furthermore, quantitative rainfall reconstructions indicate that the Paleoclimate Modeling Intercomparison Project (PMIP) simulations underestimate the magnitude of Holocene precipitation changes. Our results highlight the spatial and temporal variability of the Holocene EASM precipitation and potential forcing mechanisms, which are very helpful for calibration of paleoclimate models and prediction of future precipitation changes in East Asia in the scenario of global warming.

Historical forest and grassland cover changes not only are critical indicators for quantifying ecological and environmental change processes but also serve as fundamental data for long-term climate change simulations and terrestrial ecosystem carbon emission assessments. However, because of limitations in historical data, quantitative estimations and spatially gridded reconstructions of these changes remain challenging, necessitating further methodological exploration. This study focused on China’s present-day land area over the past millennium, objectively capturing the characteristics and drivers of forest and grassland cover changes. On this basis, using the forest transition theory and the space-for-time substitution method, we depicted the historical deforestation process as an inverted “S” curve and developed a model to reconstruct historical forest area changes based on the functional relationship between the forest area and population size dynamics. Subsequently, a gridded forest allocation model was established on the basis of deforestation tendencies. For the grassland cover, we implemented region-specific methods, such as the cropland area deduction method and the habitat constraint method, to quantitatively reconstruct historical changes. Consequently, we obtained provincial forest and grassland area changes over the past millennium and mapped 10-km-resolution gridded data of forest and grassland cover. The results indicated the following. (1) The methods developed using population data as a proxy objectively reproduced the spatiotemporal evolution of forest and grassland cover in China over the past millennium. These feasible methods offer a novel pathway for the quantitative reconstruction of historical forest and grassland cover changes. (2) The data indicated that China’s forest area generally decreased over the past millennium, characterized by a “decrease-then-increase” pattern. The forest area experienced three distinct phases: a slow decline (AD 1000–1650), a rapid decline (AD 1650–1960), and a gradual recovery (AD 1960–2000). The area decreased from 298 million hectares (Mha) in AD 1000 to 89 Mha in AD 1960 before increasing to 153 Mha in AD 2000. Spatially, deforestation began in the middle-lower reaches of the Yellow River and gradually expanded to the middle-lower reaches of the Yangtze River, the southern coastal areas of China, southwest China, and northeast China, with the forest cover declining by 27%, 40%, 58%, 55%, and 35% in these regions, respectively. (3) China’s grassland area has shown a continuous decline over the past millennium with three phases: stable fluctuation (AD 1000–1600), slow decline (AD 1600–1900), and rapid decline (AD 1900–2000). The grassland area decreased from 305 Mha in AD 1000 to 277 Mha in AD 2000. Notably, zonal grassland areas in Northeast China, Inner Mongolia, Gan-Ning, Qinghai, Xinjiang, and Xizang decreased by 28 Mha over the millennium, whereas nonzonal secondary grassland areas in the hilly and mountainous areas of eastern and southern China increased by 0.3 Mha.

Quantitative climate reconstruction on long timescales can provide important insights for understanding the climate variability and providing valuable data for simulations. Unfortunately, the credibility of some attempts was hampered by incomplete reconstruction procedures. We here establish a comprehensive framework resting on high-quality Chinese modern pollen database, including modern pollen data screening, calibration set selection, major climate factor analysis, appropriate model selection, strict statistical assessment of results and ecological interpretation. The application of this framework to three high-resolution pollen records from the eastern Tibetan Plateau allows accurate quantitative inferences of Holocene temperature changes, which is the major control of regional vegetation. The results show that the mean warmest month temperature (MT wa ) during the early Holocene was ca. 10.4°C and reached the highest value at 8.5–6 ka BP (ca. 11°C). The early and mid-Holocene (11–5 ka BP) warmth was followed by 1.2°C temperature decrease, culminating in the coolest temperatures of the Holocene during the Neoglacial cooling. Superimposing on the general cooling trend, MT wa reveals a significant 500-yr periodicity with varying intensities through time, showing that warm (cold) intervals are in phase with solar maxima (minima) periods. This spectral similarity indicates a possible connection of multi-century scale climate fluctuations with solar forcing.

Quantitative reconstruction of past vegetation is one of the primary goals in Quaternary palynology and palaeoecology but still remains difficult. This paper proposes a model, REVEALS, that estimates regional vegetation composition using pollen from ‘large lakes’ that have small site-to-site variations of pollen assemblages even if vegetation is highly heterogeneous. Once these data have been used to quantify regional vegetation composition within 104 -105 km2, background pollen, one of the parameters crucial for vegetation reconstruction, can be estimated for smaller-sized sites, and incorporated into the Landscape Reconstruction Algorithm (LRA), a multistep framework for quantitative reconstruction of vegetation in smaller areas (≤ 104 ha). Simulations using the POLLSCAPE modelling show that REVEALS can provide accurate estimates of regional vegetation composition in various landscapes and under different atmospheric conditions. If pollen assemblages from lakes that are much smaller than ‘large lakes’ are used, estimates of regional vegetation at individual sites could be significantly different from the expected values, and their site-to-site variation could be large. However, when pollen data from multiple lakes ≥ 100-500 ha in size are available, REVEALS can provide accurate estimates of the regional vegetation with relatively small standard errors. Quantitative reconstruction of regional landscape and vegetation change will be critical for testing some of the controversial hypotheses and concepts in global change and conservation research, such as the impacts of agricultural activities on global climate over the last 8000 years and the open-woodland hypothesis in northern Europe in the early Holocene.

The timing of the Holocene summer monsoon maximum (HSMM) in northeastern China has been much debated and more quantitative precipitation records are needed to resolve the issue. In the present study, Holocene precipitation and temperature changes were quantitatively reconstructed from a pollen record from the sediments of Tianchi Crater Lake in northeastern China using a plant functional type-modern analogue technique (PFT-MAT). The reconstructed precipitation record indicates a gradual increase during the early to mid-Holocene and a HSMM at ~5500–3100 cal yr BP, while the temperature record exhibits a divergent pattern with a marked rise in the early Holocene and a decline thereafter. The trend of reconstructed precipitation is consistent with that from other pollen records in northeastern China, confirming the relatively late occurrence of the HSMM in the region. However, differences in the onset of the HSMM within northeastern China are also evident. No single factor appears to be responsible for the late occurrence of the HSMM in northeastern China, pointing to a potentially complex forcing mechanism of regional rainfall in the East Asian monsoon region. We suggest that further studies are needed to understand the spatiotemporal pattern of the HSMM in the region.

Lakes are inextricably connected to their adjacent landscape, acting as dynamic integrators of auto- and allogenic stressors. These processes are recorded in lake sediments and can be inferred and reconstructed using paleolimnological proxies. Like much of the Northeastern USA, Vermont lakes are changing rapidly in response to multiple stressors. This includes more than 800 lakes that span gradients of elevation, latitude, trophic status, depth, clarity, and watershed area. Long-term monitoring data indicate that all oligotrophic lakes in the state have experienced a near-doubling in total phosphorus (TP) over the past four decades, a trend unique to Vermont that is not occurring in neighboring states. Many montane lakes recovering from acidification are now experiencing browning and rapid surface-water warming. Understanding these interacting trends at long-term scales requires proxy-based reconstruction of sediment records. Here we describe regional training sets and transfer functions for TP and pH developed using modern water chemistry and sediment diatom records from 80 and 96 lakes, respectively, spanning chemical, trophic, latitudinal, and elevation gradients. TP and pH were chosen because they are known stressors to Vermont lakes and have been shown to correlate with diatom assemblages in previous work in the region. We used weighted-averaging partial least squares regression to reconstruct diatom-inferred TP and pH (DI-TP, DI-pH) for the period predating the European settlement of the state (~ 1800) using a top–bottom approach for 96 lake cores. We present a high-resolution reconstruction of these variables for acid-impaired, mesotrophic Beaver Pond and compare with long-term monitoring records. Based on our findings, we present recommendations and limitations for model application.

This paper describes the LOVE (LOcal Vegetation Estimates) model for estimating local vegetation composition within the relevant source area of pollen. This model quantifies and then subtracts background pollen (ie, pollen coming from beyond the relevant source area) in order to arrive at a quantitative reconstruction of local vegetation. Parameters required for LOVE applications are pollen counts from target sites, the relevant source area of pollen of these sites, pollen productivity estimates and regional vegetation composition within 104 -105 km2. Regional vegetation composition is obtained using fossil pollen from large sites (≥102 ha) with the REVEALS (Regional Estimates of VEgetation Abundance from Large Sites) model, the first step of the Landscape Reconstruction Algorithm (LRA) specifically designed for LOVE applications. POLLSCAPE simulations demonstrate that (1) regional vegetation composition can be used to predict background pollen at and beyond the relevant source area of pollen for given-sized basins, (2) LOVE with the LRA framework provides a robust and accurate estimate of local vegetation composition much better than vegetation reconstruction using pollen percentages alone and (3) although the relevant source area of pollen is difficult to estimate particularly in past landscapes, a proposed method using backward modelling of LOVE is effective to estimate the relevant source area in landscapes of unknown vegetation patchiness and heterogeneity. Thus, the LRA will also be useful to estimate indirectly changes in spatial structure of past vegetation and landscape caused by natural and anthropogenic forcing.

The quantitative reconstruction of the length of the rainy season and precipitation on the Tibetan Plateau (TP) is crucial for revealing the spatiotemporal evolution of the Westerlies and Asian summer monsoon, as well as its ecological and environmental effects. Accurately determining the start and end times of the rainy season on the Plateau remains challenging. This study determined the start and end times of the rainy season in different locations on the Plateau by identifying precipitation inflection points. We calculated the duration and precipitation amount of the rainy season and established a transfer function between the modern pollen assemblages and them. Then, we reconstructed the rainy season variations in Kusai Lake (northern TP) and Jiang Co (central TP) during the past two millennia. The results showed that, the rainy season precipitation in Kusai Lake recorded five periods of high precipitation: AD 580–680, 1000–1100, 1200–1450, 1550–1780, and 1920–present, corresponding to the stages with long rainy season. The rainy season precipitation sequence in Jiang Co recorded four periods of high precipitation: AD 80–500, 800–950, 1250–1450, and 1780–present, which is consistent with the long rainy season before AD 1000 but unclear afterward. Spatially, rainy season precipitation on the Plateau exhibited four patterns: “wet in both north and south” may be related to abnormally strong summer monsoons; “dry in both north and south” likely associated with weak Westerly wind and weak summer monsoon; “wet in the south and dry in the north” linked to strong summer monsoon and weak Westerly wind; and “dry in the south and wet in the north” connected to weak summer monsoon and strong Westerly wind. This study revealed the spatiotemporal evolution pattern of the rainy season onset and end, duration, and precipitation amount on the Plateau over the past two millennia. It provides natural background support for further understanding the coupling between Westerly wind and Asian summer monsoon.

Quantitative proxy-based and high-resolution palaeoclimatic datasets are scarce for the lower reaches of the Yangtze River (LYR) basin. This region is in a transitional vegetation zone which is climatologically sensitive; and as a birthplace for prehistorical civilization in China, it is important to understand how palaeoclimatic dynamics played a role in affecting cultural development in the region. We present a pollen-based and regionally-averaged Holocene climatic twin-dataset for mean total annual precipitation (PANN) and mean annual temperature (TANN) covering the last 10,000 years for the LYR region. This is based on the technique of weighted averaging-partial least squares regression to establish robust calibration models for obtaining reliable climatic inferences. The pollen-based reconstructions generally show an early Holocene climatic optimum with both abundant monsoonal rainfall and warm thermal conditions, and a declining pattern of both PANN and TANN values in the middle to late Holocene. The main driving forces behind the Holocene climatic changes in the LYR area are likely summer solar insolation associated with tropical or subtropical macro-scale climatic circulations such as the Intertropical Convergence Zone (ITCZ), Western Pacific Subtropical High (WPSH), and El Niño/Southern Oscillation (ENSO). Regional multi-proxy comparisons indicate that the Holocene variations in precipitation and temperature for the LYR region display an in-phase relationship with other related proxy records from southern monsoonal China and the Indian monsoon-influenced regions, but are inconsistent with the Holocene moisture or temperature records from northern monsoonal China and the westerly-dominated region in northwestern China. Overall, our comprehensive palaeoclimatic dataset and models may be significant tools for understanding the Holocene Asian monsoonal evolution and for anticipating its future dynamics in eastern Asia.

This study investigates the reliability of phytolith assemblage analysis for characterizing subtropical vegetation and explores the potential for using these modern phytolith–vegetation relationships for paleoenvironmental interpretation in southeastern China. The samples were collected from five common subtropical vegetation communities in the Daiyun Mountains, southeastern China, with the above-ground vegetation recorded at each plot. Constrained ordination analysis was used to determine the most important factor governing the variations in phytolith assemblages that could be quantitatively reconstructed with weighted averaging partial least squares regression (WAPLS). The relationship between modern phytolith assemblages and the parent vegetation, as well as production, dispersal, and taphonomic processes, was discussed. Results demonstrated that the main subtropical biomes in southeastern China could be well distinguished by soil phytolith assemblages. In particular, the overall amount of tree coverage was well represented by topsoil phytolith assemblages. Grass silica short cell phytoliths (GSSCP) tended to occur in higher proportions in open habitats (shrub-meadow) at higher elevations, whereas non-grass phytolith morphotypes attained higher frequencies under mixed and broadleaf forests at lower elevations. Human-induced deforestation might increase the frequency of GSSCP within the bulk phytolith assemblage. Our results constitute the primary phytolith reference data for the subtropical zone in southeastern Asia where vegetation change during the Holocene period, particularly forest shifts, anthropogenic deforestation, and early agriculture are poorly documented.