John Dodson

Sydney and Xi'an · Environment

[This corrects the article DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0193025.].

This paper presents a reassessment of the archaeological record at Leang Burung 2, a key early human occupation site in the Late Pleistocene of Southeast Asia. Excavated originally by Ian Glover in 1975, this limestone rock-shelter in the Maros karsts of Sulawesi, Indonesia, has long held significance in our understanding of early human dispersals...

The destruction of Earth systems driven by climate change may soon reach the critical point beyond which they will be impossible to restore. Therefore, there is imperative to develop new energy technologies that are environmentally clean. This imposes the need to develop novel energy-related education programs and the related textbook that speaks a...

The recent climate change agreement in Paris highlights the imperative to aggressively decarbonize the energy economy and develop new technologies, especially for the generation of electrical energy that are environmentally clean. This challenge can only be addressed by a multi-pronged approach to research and education of the next generation of sc...

The increasing demand for sustainable energy results in the development of new technologies of energy generation. The key objective of hydrogen economy is the introduction of hydrogen as main energy carrier, along with electricity, on a global scale. The key goal is the development of hydrogen-related technologies needed for hydrogen generation, hy...

Despite the great potential of palaeo-environmental information to strengthen natural resource policy, science and practical outcomes naturally occurring archives of palaeo-environmental and ecosystem service information have not been fully recognised or utilised to inform the development of environmental policy. In this paper, we describe how Aust...

The origins of domesticated sheep (Ovis sp.) in China remain unknown. Previous workers have speculated that sheep may have been present in China up to 7000 years ago, however many claims are based on associations with archaeological material rather than independent dates on sheep material. Here we present 7 radiocarbon dates on sheep bone from Inne...

Unravelling links between climate change and vegetation response during the Quaternary is important if the climate–environment interactions of modern systems are to be fully understood. Using a sediment core from Lake McKenzie, Fraser Island, we reconstruct changes in the lake ecosystem and surrounding vegetation over the last ca. 36.9 cal kyr. Evi...

Today in China, hexaploid wheat (Triticum aestivum – common wheat or bread wheat) is one of the major staple food crops. The other key cereal staples – rice, foxtail millet and broomcorn millet – are widely accepted as Chinese domesticates, but the origins of wheat cultivation in China are the subject of debate. There has long been a belief among C...

We present quantitative reconstructions of regional vegetation cover in north-western Europe, western Europe north of the Alps, and eastern Europe for five time windows in the Holocene (around 6k, 3k, 0.5k, 0.2k, and 0.05k calendar years before present (BP)) at a 1° x 1° spatial scale with the objective of producing vegetation descriptions suitable...

Branched glycerol dialkyl glycerol tetraether (GDGT) distributions observed in a sediment core from Lake McKenzie were utilized to quantitatively reconstruct the pattern of mean annual air temperature (MAAT) from coastal subtropical eastern Australia between 37 and 18.3 cal ka BP and 14.0 cal ka BP to present. Both the reconstructed trend and ampli...

Australian researchers are creating, and environmental policy makers and managers are using, palaeo-environmental and ecosystem service information. Innovations in ecosystem services and palaeo-environmental science; better and cheaper local studies and regional syntheses, knowledge of extreme conditions Contributing to 5 important contexts of us...

People in northern and western China were probably the first in the world to use coal as a source of energy in a consistent way. The ages cluster around 1900-2200 BC in modern day Inner Mongolia and Shanxi provinces. These are areas where near-surface coal is abundant today and woody vegetation was scant in the Bronze Age. Since coal is bulky to tr...

We present pollen-based reconstructions of the spatio-temporal dynamics of northern European regional vegetation abundance through the Holocene. We apply the Regional Estimates of VEgetation Abundance from Large Sites (REVEALS) model using fossil pollen records from eighteen sites within five modern biomes in the region. The eighteen sites are clas...

The Cuddie Springs site in south-eastern Australia provides the first evidence of an unequivocal association of megafauna with humans for this continent. Cuddie Springs has been known as a fossil megafauna locality for over a century, but its archaeological record has only recently been identified. Cuddie Springs is an open site, with the fossil de...

Assessing the potential impact of increased temperature needs examination of robust palaeorecords that contain analogues. The fossil charcoal (anthracological) records from the mid-Holocene archaeological sites can provide palaeo-analogues on the impacts of climate change. The Xishanping and Dadiwan sites were continuously developed during the Neol...

Pollen and charred seeds from the Xintala site within the Yanqi Oasis of Xinjiang in Northwest China were investigated to understand the impact of early agriculture on an oasis landscapes. The data show the original vegetation was meadow steppe dominated by Asteraceae and Poaceae. Wheat-growing agriculture reshaped the landscape by destroying the o...

The Australian region spans some 60° of latitude and 50° of longitude and displays considerable regional climate variability both today and during the Late Quaternary. A synthesis of marine and terrestrial climate records, combining findings from the Southern Ocean, temperate, tropical and arid zones, identifies a complex response of climate proxie...

The vegetation of Europe has undergone substantial changes during the course of the Holocene epoch, resulting from range expansion of plants following climate amelioration, competition between taxa and disturbance through anthropogenic activities. Much of the detail of this pattern is understood from decades of pollen analytical work across Europe,...

Wheat was added as a new crop to the existing millet and rice based agricultural systems of China. Here we present 35 radiocarbon ages from wheat seeds collected from 18 sites between western (Xinjiang Province) and eastern (Henan Province) China. The earliest wheat ages cluster around 2100-1800 BCE in northern China's Hexi corridor of Gansu Provin...

An extended pollen record with grain size analysis and AMS 14C dating is provided for a palaeolake section which is located in an intermountain basin in Yili Valley, Xinjiang, NW China. Covering the late MIS 3, early MIS 2 and the last deglaciation, vegetation variations and climate events are discussed in relation to changes in pollen assemblages...

1] Climate is an important control on biomass burning, but the sensitivity of fire to changes in temperature and moisture balance has not been quantified. We analyze sedimentary charcoal records to show that the changes in fire regime over the past 21,000 yrs are predictable from changes in regional climates. Analyses of paleo-fire data show that f...

The taxonomic identification of fossil charcoal can be a useful archaeobotanical tool, as it can reveal information about prehistoric humans' use of plant resources and other factors. In this study, we quantify the fossil charcoal in a cultural sequence from Xishanping in the western Loess Plateau of China representing 4800–4300 cal yr BP to consid...

The nature of Holocene climate patterns and mechanisms in central Asia are open areas of inquiry. In this study, regional vegetation and climate dynamics over the last ca. 4000 years are reconstructed using a high resolution pollen record from the Kashgar oasis, on the western margin of the Tarim Basin, central Asia. Ephedra, Chenopodiaceae and Can...

Pollen and charcoal analysis, with high resolution AMS 14C dating, on two sediment sections in the Hexi Corridor track the process of settlement development and abandonment during the Bronze Age. The evidence shows that agricultural activity during the Bronze Age caused an increase in farmland and a decrease in the abundance of Artemisia grassland...

Understanding terrestrial vegetation dynamics is a crucial tool in global change research. The Loess Plateau, an important area for the study of Asian monsoons and early agriculture, poses a controversial question on the potential vegetation and its pattern. Fossil charcoal as direct evidence of wood provides precision in species identification and...

Stable carbon and nitrogen isotope values are presented for faunal and human bone collagen from Baijia, in the Wei River valley region of Shaanxi Province, China. The remains have a calibrated age range of ca. 5709–5389 BC, and correspond with the early Neolithic Laoguantai Period. Stable isotopic results indicate that human diets included millet a...

Dietary patterns at two Bronze Age sites in the Hexi Corridor are investigated by the analysis of stable carbon and nitrogen isotopes in faunal bone collagen. The findings are compared with archaeobotanical remains from one of the sites which include high proportions of millet (Panicum miliaceum and Setaria italica) as well as the western derived c...

Lakes are important connection points of the hydrosphere, atmosphere, biosphere and lithosphere (Shen, et al, 2007; Shen, 2009). As a relatively independent system, lake sediments may record important information about the local past environment (e.g. Von Gunten et al., 1997; Wang and Zhang, 1999, Harle, et al, 2002). By dating lake sediment sample...

Recent research has greatly increased our knowledge of early human impacts on the environment. Records of fossil charcoal and chemical elements from a bronze smelting site at Huoshiliang, in the Hexi corridor of northwest China, provide material with which to estimate the extent of smelting activity and its impact on the environment. Analysis of th...

Neolithic agricultural development and environmental effects in the Longdong area were reconstructed using a synthetic approach, investigating pollen, charcoal, and seed remains for two cultural layer sections and five flotation sites. Results show that Neolithic agriculture in the Longdong area had a simple organization and was dominated by the pr...

We have compiled 223 sedimentary charcoal records from Australasia in order to examine the temporal and spatial variability of fire regimes during the Late Quaternary. While some of these records cover more than a full glacial cycle, here we focus on the last 70,000 years when the number of individual records in the compilation allows more robust c...

Analyses of sedimentary evidence in the form of spores, pollen, freshwater algae, dinoflagellate cysts, phytoliths and charcoal from AMS 14C-dated, Holocene-aged sequences provide an excellent opportunity to examine the responses of Neolithic agriculturalists in the lower Yangtze to changing environments. Evidence from two sites close to the southe...

Climate is a term referring to long-term patterns of weather conditions, and it is sometimes difficult to say where weather ends and climate begins. There is abundant evidence that climates have changed significantly in the past and that these were driven by a great complex of natural and usually interlinked processes with strong feedback mechanism...

Chevron Australia is seeking to develop coastal infrastructure to support the Wheatstone gas field, including a dredged navigation channel, jetty, sheltered harbour basin, and incoming gas pipeline. The proposed site lies west of Onslow, near the eastern end of the low‐lying Ashburton deltaic system, which exhibits a complex structure suggesting al...

Human health is directly and indirectly influenced by the effects of climate change – air and sea temperatures, rainfall and more frequent and severe climate extremes. These effects do not impact on human populations uniformly, however, and this chapter looks at the interplay between climate and the different lifestyles that follow societal transit...

金属的使用与冶炼是人类社会发展过程中-项革命性事件。河西走廊地区全新世条湖湖相沉积元素地球化学记录显示,10500-9500cal aBP和8000-7200cal aBP时段Cu、Pb、Zn、Ni元素含量高值区,分别对应了早全新世增温期冰川融水量增加和全新世适宜期季风降水的增强。Cu、As、Pb、Zn、Ni含量在4200-3700cal aBP时段出现最高峰值,另外Cu、Pb、Zn、Ni4种元素在3000-2700和2100-1900cal aBP时段出现较高峰值。4200-3700cal aBP时段元素异常记录了我国西北地区最早的青铜冶炼,As元素是这-时期青铜合金的主要成份。另外,西周时期(3000-2700cal aBP)和汉代(2100-1900cal aBP)Cu、Pb、Zn、N...

The emergence and rapid spread of agriculture from the early Holocene has made a great impact on the development of human societies and landscape change. Guanzhong Basin in the middle of Yellow River valley has a long continuous history of agriculture since the Neolithic. The pollen and charcoal records from Xindian in western Guanzhong Basin, toge...

Understanding of the origin and development of bronze technology in eastern Asia remains unresolved. Here we report on the distribution of copper and associated cations in sediments from Huoshiliang in northwestern Gansu, China, strontium and lead isotope analyses of ore and slag samples, and some artifact fragments at archaeological sites at Gangg...

The origin of the polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon (PAH) perylene in sediments and petroleum has been a matter of continued debate. Reported to occur in Phanerozoic organic matter (OM), fossil crinoids and tropical termite mounds, its mechanism of formation remains unclear. While a combustion source can be excluded, structural similarities to peryle...

CO2 and CH4 composition of the atmosphere increased rapidly following the industrial revolution. Recently Ruddiman has suggested that increases in the anthropogenic contribution to atmospheric greenhouse gases had actually begun thousands of years earlier. Research on climates indicates that a cooling and drying trend developed from about 5000 BP a...

This study assesses human impact on the landscape around Cobrico, a volcanic crater lake in dairying country in south-western Victoria. It compares the last 150 years of impact of European settlement against approximately the previous 1500 years of prehistoric occupation and land use. Focus is on vegetation dynamics, erosion, productivity changes a...

A palaeoecological approach was undertaken to investigate the last 400 years of change in vegetation, fire, nutrient mobility, lake productivity and erosion associated with Aboriginal and European land-use practices in a forested environment in eastern Victoria. Melaleuca ericifolia scrub, although present prior to European settlement, has expanded...

Fire activity has varied globally and continuously since the last glacial maximum (LGM) in response to long-term changes in global climate and shorter-term regional changes in climate, vegetation, and human land use. We have synthesized sedimentary charcoal records of biomass burning since the LGM and present global maps showing changes in fire act...

Sedimentary evidence from a total of 21 AMS 14C dates and 192 pollen and charcoal and 181 phytolith samples from three study sites in the archaeologically rich lower Yangtze in China provides an indication of interactions between early agriculturalists and generally highly dynamic environmental conditions. Results suggest that environmental changes...

Dodson, John R. & Bradshaw, Richard H. W. 1987 06 01: A history of vegetation and fire, 6,600 B.P. to present, County Sligo, western Ireland. Boreas, Vol. 16, pp. 113–123. Oslo. ISSN 0300–9483. Two lake sites on metamorphic rocks with small catchments and one mor humus deposit have been analysed to assess the relative influences of fire, man and cl...

Introductory Textbook to the physical environment, and including the atmosphere, the biosphere, and the geosphere, with a focus on Australia.

Rice cultivation in parts of the Yangtze valley, eastern China, is thought to date to at least the early Holocene. Using phytolith analysis, sediments from an exposed profile at Qingpu in the lower Yangtze were examined in detail in order to contribute to the growing body of information relating to the history of rice agriculture in the Yangtze del...

Multiproxies of past environmental conditions, comprising 53 sediment samples analysed for their lithostratigraphic properties (mainly their charcoal, phytoliths and pollen contents) from an AMS 14C-dated sequence of sediments accumulating at Guangfulin, Yangtze delta, are presented. The oldest sediments recovered date to the Lateglacial when a mos...

The crop types and agricultural characteristic are reconstructed using the archaeobiological proxies of pollen, seed and phytolith at Xishanping site in Gansu Province between 5250 and 4300 cal a BP. The agricultural activity strengthened in Xishanping from 5100 cal a BP. It appeared the earliest cultivation of prehistoric rice in the most northwes...

The lower Yangtze, eastern China, was colonized by several Neolithic and Bronze Age cultures giving rise to possibly the highest concentration of prehistoric sites in the world. Early Neolithic cultures in the delta region cultivated rice (Oryza sativa) and agricultural developments appear to have occurred throughout the Neolithic with abrupt socio...

Evidence for cultivated wheat at 4650 cal. yr BP, as part of a broadening agricultural-based society (4650—4300 cal. yr BP), is presented from Xishanping in northwest China. This was established from archaeobotanical evidence and radiocarbon dating. Crops from SW Asia had therefore been adopted in China about 2500 years earlier than previously thou...

Pollen, plant seeds and phytoliths from an AMS dated sediment profile at the Xishanping site indicate that the cultivation of rice might start no later than 5070 cal. a BP in the region of Tianshui, Gansu Province. It continued from 5070 to 4300 cal. a BP. This is so far the oldest and the most northwestern record of cultivated rice in Neolithic Ch...

Rice (Oryza sp.) agriculture sustains vast numbers of people and, despite great advancements made in recent years, questions about its origins and spread throughout Asia remain unanswered. This study uses sedimentary biomarker, stable carbon isotope and palynological analyses to investigate early rice agriculture in the Yangtze delta, a region wher...

A Late Pleistocene-Holocene pollen, phosphorus, and charcoal record was reconstructed from a peatland in southern Jiangxi Province in southern China. The area today has a mountainous and rolling landscape with villages, small towns, and agriculture dominated by rice paddies, vegetable, and fruit gardens, as well as areas of secondary forest and pin...

The stratigraphy and pollen analysis of the basal 5.73 m of an 11.73 m core from the centre of Victoria's deepest lake is described. The hypothesis is advanced that at 16 100 B.P. a cool semi-arid environment supporting a sparse or scattered Eucalyptus–Callitris woodland with an understorey of grasses, Asteraceae and Chenopodiaceae dominated the re...

Fossil pollen and grain size analysis of sediments from Yallalie in south-western Australia is used to reconstruct the history of salinization and aridity of the region between 2.63 and 2.56 Ma. Three well-defined episodes of aridity are defined by a reduction in humid woodland and expansion of chenopod shrubland around 2.59, 2.56 and 2.558 Ma. Eac...

Pollen records of two swamp sections, located at Taibai Mountain, the highest peak in the Qinling Mountains of central China, show variations of vegetation and climate for the last 3 500 cal BP. The pollen assemblage at the Foyechi and Sanqingchi sections and the surface soil pollen allowed us to reconstruct a high-altitude vegetation history at Ta...

Abstract Yallalie is a probable meteor impact crater and in the Upper Pliocene contained a substantial lake. Two Mid-Pliocene finely laminated sediment records from Palaeolake Yallalie, from about 3 million years ago, provide evidence of fire and fire frequency in the sclerophyll woodland and heaths of south-western Australia in the absence of huma...

The purpose of this introduction is to provide a background to the natural and human environmental systems on the Austral-Asian (or PEP II) transect. Aspects of these systems are discussed in greater detail in the papers that follow in this volume. Focusing on the distinctive characteristics of the PEP II transect, this paper begins with an overvie...

The dry lands in China and Mongolia include sand seas, gravel deserts, stable sand dunes, desert steppe, steppe and scrub-woodlands environments distributed in a wide range of geomorphological and tectonic settings, from 155 m below sea level to more than 5000 m asl. In China, the sandy deserts and gravel deserts are located in the arid regions mai...

The Southern Hemisphere westerlies in the southwest Pacific are known to have waxed and waned numerous times during the last two glacial cycles, though even semi-continuous histories of the westerlies extend back no more than about 20,000 years. We have good evidence for at least three scales of events.A westerly maximum occurs at the Last Glacial...

Aim This paper documents reconstructions of the vegetation patterns in Australia, Southeast Asia and the Pacific (SEAPAC region) in the mid-Holocene and at the last glacial maximum (LGM). Methods Vegetation patterns were reconstructed from pollen data using an objective biomization scheme based on plant functional types. The biomization scheme was...

Interactions of some of the principal historical natural hazards with human populations in the Austral-Asian region are discussed both from the perspective of the impact of the hazard on humans as well as the effects of human activities and climate change on hazard magnitude and frequency. Basically, the former type of interaction is evident for mo...

A 110-m-thick sequence of Late Neogene lacustrine silts and clays is sealed under Quaternary cover beds in a Cretaceous meteor crater at Yallalie in semiarid to subhumid southwest Western Australia. Paleomagnetic dating confirms that these sediments accumulated between 3.6 and ∼2.5 Ma. This Middle Pliocene (Piacenzian) interval coincides with a per...

Sequences of lacustrine sediments developed in intermontane basins in the middle-eastern Shanxi Plateau of China have been investigated in order to reconstruct the paleovegetation and paleoclimate for the middle–late Pliocene. According to the magnetostratigraphy and the fossil assemblages, the lacustrine sediments of Yushe and Taigu Basins were de...

Aim This paper aims to reconstruct a high-resolution fire and vegetation history from a period when humans were absent in Australia. This is then used to comment on the frequency of natural fire in high biodiversity heathland, and to compare this with historical fire regime in the same region. Methods A section of varved sediment covering a period...

Fine-resolution palaeovegetation and palaeomonsoon proxies for the last 13 ka have been established at the desert-loess transition belt in northern China. These are based on pollen, organic carbon and delta(13)C analysis of samples from a peat section at Midiwan. Results show that the palaeovegetation underwent nine major changes: desert-grassland,...

Vegetation history is a valuable tool to assist understanding of environmental changes, ecological restoration and human impact on the environment. This study discusses the pollen analysis of the Yaoxian section on the southern margin of the Loess Plateau in China. Based on the pollen diagram, the vegetation of Yaoxian shows four episodes of change...

The late Holocene of south-eastern Australia was typified by stable climate, vegetation and sedimentary regimes, in relative equilibrium with Aboriginal land use and fire management. The arrival of Europeans, with the associated vegetation clearance, introduction of exotic plants and animals, notably for grazing and agriculture and a change in fire...