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Late Quaternary Qaidam lake histories and implications for an MIS 3 “Greatest Lakes” period in northwest China

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Abstract

Da Qaidam and Xiao Qaidam are two of a number of lakes in northwestern China whose lake histories have been used to support the notion of a “Greatest Lakes” period in the region during marine isotope stage (MIS) 3. Reappraisal of the basins’ geomorphology, however, suggests that both lakes are highly problematic proxies for past climate. Xiao Qaidam has a low overflow threshold, only ~10–12 m above the lake surface, well below previously estimated high stands, and until about 17–23 ka BP Da Qaidam was occasionally fed by a river whose flow into the lake basin was geomorphically, rather than climatically controlled. Based on limited optically stimulated luminescence dating of shoreline and alluvial sediments it appears that highstands in the basins occurred ~100 ka BP or earlier. The two lakes are thus part of an increasing number of lake records that suggest, at least in northwestern China, (1) some lake histories may not record climate events, and (2) that the “Greatest Lakes” high stands occurred much earlier than previously recognized.

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Acknowledgments

This work was supported by P.R.C. 973 project (2010CB950202), U.S. National Science Foundation grants 0214870 and 084145, and a Chinese Academy of Science One-Hundred Talent Project (A0961) granted to ZPL. We thank Zhang Biao, E Chongyi, Steffen Mischke, David Page, Evelyn Seelinger, and two anonymous reviewers for assistance with this project.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. MOE Key Laboratory of West China’s Environmental System, Research School of Arid Environment and Climate Change, Lanzhou University, Lanzhou, 730000, China

    David B. Madsen

  2. State Key Laboratory of Cryosphere Sciences, Cold and Arid Regions Environmental and Engineering Research Institute, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Lanzhou, 730000, China

    ZhongPing Lai

  3. Luminescence Dating Group, Qinghai Institute of Salt Lakes, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Xining, 810008, China

    ZhongPing Lai, YongJuan Sun & XiangJun Liu

  4. Earth and Ecosystem Sciences, Desert Research Institute, Reno, NV, 89512, USA

    David Rhode

  5. Department of Anthropology, University of California Los Angeles, Los Angeles, CA, 90095, USA

    P. Jeffrey Brantingham

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  1. David B. Madsen
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Correspondence to David B. Madsen.

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Madsen, D.B., Lai, Z., Sun, Y. et al. Late Quaternary Qaidam lake histories and implications for an MIS 3 “Greatest Lakes” period in northwest China. J Paleolimnol 51, 161–177 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10933-012-9662-x

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10933-012-9662-x

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