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Holocene vegetation cover in Qin’an area of western Chinese Loess Plateau revealed by n-alkane

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  • Geography
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Chinese Science Bulletin

Abstract

Previous studies have found that wetlands prevailed in western Chinese Loess Plateau and pine pollen could reach up to 80% in Qin’an area of the plateau during middle Holocene. It was then deduced that forest vegetation covered Qin’an area in a warm and wet climate during middle Holocene. The proxies of molecule biomarkers from two Holocene sections, a swamp-alluvial loess section and a typical loess-paleosol section are used to reconstruct regional vegetation history. It is found that the heavy-molecular-weight (HMW) homologues of the n-alkanes in all samples exhibit a pronounced odd-over-even predominance, maximizing at C31 and the abundance of the nC27-alkanes is the lowest in nC27, nC29, nC31, i.e. C27<C29<C31, a typical grass n-alkanes model. The results are the same as those of model surface soil samples under grass cover but different from both forest cover and modern pine leaves, which yield preferentially nC29-alkanes peak. It could be inferred that the area was dominated by grass cover but not forest cover during whole Holocene epoch. The study shows that combining both molecule biomarkers and pollen analysis can avoid the disadvantage of pollen analysis in reconstruction of regional vegetation cover.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Key Laboratory of Western China’s Environmental Systems (MOE), Lanzhou University, Lanzhou, 730000, China

    Zhong YanXia, Chen FaHu & An ChengBang

  2. Laboratory of Earth Surface Systems, Chinese University of Geosciences, Wuhan, 430074, China

    Zhong YanXia, Xie ShuCheng & Huang XianYu

  3. Faculty of Resource and Environment, Ningxia University, Yinchuan, 750021, China

    Zhong YanXia

Authors
  1. Zhong YanXia
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  2. Chen FaHu
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  3. An ChengBang
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  4. Xie ShuCheng
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  5. Huang XianYu
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Correspondence to Chen FaHu.

Additional information

Supported by the NSFC Innovation Team Project (No. 401421101), the Open Foundation of Laboratory of Earth Surface System, China University of Geosciences, and the Key Program of the National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 90502008)

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Zhong, Y., Chen, F., An, C. et al. Holocene vegetation cover in Qin’an area of western Chinese Loess Plateau revealed by n-alkane. CHINESE SCI BULL 52, 1692–1698 (2007). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11434-007-0263-4

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11434-007-0263-4

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