BIOME 6000
China
The biome reconstructions for China are being made as part of a research collaboration between Nanjing University (Ge Yu) and the Max- Planck-Institute for BioGeoChemistry at Jena (S. Harrison, I.C. Prentice).
Palaeovegetation of China: a pollen data-based synthesis for the
mid-Holocene
China represents an important region for BIOME 6000 because of its large
area, its great vegetational diversity, spanning biomes from tundra
and taiga to hot deserts and tropical forests, its particular significance
for understanding monsoon dynamics, and because of the large quantity
of palaeoecological data that has been obtained from most regions.
Pollen data from China 0 and 6000 14C-years ago (oka, 6ka) were compiled from contributions of major palynologists and Quaternarists from China and international cooperaters. These data were used to reconstruct palaeovegetation patterns. A set of modern pollen samples spanning all biomes and regions provided a comprehensive test for this procedure and showed convincing agreement between reconstructed biomes and present natural vegetation types, both geographically and in terms of the elevation gradients in mountain regions of NE and SW China.
The reconstruction of 6ka biomes showed that the forest biomes in eastern China were systematically shifted northwards and extended westwards during the mid-Holocene. The spatial coverage now attained enables these shifts to be quantified. The northward extension of forest biomes increases with latitude: the northern limit of tropical forests was shifted ca 100 km, while the northern limit of broad-leaved evergreen forest was shifted 300-400 km and the northern limit of temperate deciduous forest ca 800 km relative to today.
This work contributes to the IGBP-sponsored global palaeovegetation mapping project BIOME 6000.
