Shuangwen Yi

• Nanjing University

Multiple tipping points in the Earth system could be triggered when global warming exceeds specific thresholds. However, the degree of their impact on the East Asian hydroclimate remains uncertain due to the lack of quantitative rainfall records. Here we present an ensemble reconstruction of East Asian summer monsoon (EASM) rainfall since the Last...

https://authors.elsevier.com/a/1jjPQ,3sl3-3Ta. As a key geomorphic archive, staircase sequences of terraces and sediments record the history of fluvial aggradation and incision, which are related to tectonic activities, climatic fluctuations, and varying base levels. While numerous studies have investigated their influence on the formation of fluvi...

The origin of agriculture in the farming-pastoral zone of northern China remains in dispute. The central region of the Inner Mongolia Plateau is located in the core area of the farming-pastoral zone; thus, it is a critical region for exploring the origin of the dryland farming system in northern China. This study selected the Yumin Site and Banan S...

（Here is the personalized Share Link providing 50 days' free access to the article: https://authors.elsevier.com/a/1j3MH3HcE1r1yO） The soil organic carbon isotope indicator (δ13Corg) is widely used in paleoecology and paleoclimate reconstruction due to its ability to record the history of paleovegetation change. Although it has been used as a proxy...

https://www.lyellcollection.org/token/ARSNDEM2JWAUB7HKSEME/Eprints. Fluvial terraces are important archives for inferring changes in river dynamics. In the northeastern Tibetan Plateau (NETP), the Huangshui River flows through broad depressions and narrow gorges. This morphology is the result of strike-slip- and reverse-faulting. The differential v...

The cycle of precipitation change is key to understanding the driving mechanism of the East Asian summer monsoon (EASM). However, the dominant cycles of EASM precipitation revealed by different proxy indicators are inconsistent, leading to the “Chinese 100 kyr problem”. In this study, we examine a high-resolution, approximately 350,000-year record...

https://authors.elsevier.com/a/1gg%7E%7E-4PS63KS The detailed evolution of valley-damming by glaciers on the southeastern Tibetan Plateau, including the large Gega paleolake, is reconstructed based on observed sediment sequences, and optically stimulated luminescence (OSL) dating. In total, six main lithofacies associations are inferred that repre...

The cycle of precipitation change indicated by different proxy indicators are found to be inconsistent, which results in the “Chinese 100-kyr Problem”. The loess deposited in the past ~350 ka at the low latitude of East Asia is measured here. We find that the magnetic susceptibility varied at 100-kyr and 40-kyr cycles, can be interpreted as proxy f...

There is great controversy regarding variations in the East Asian summer monsoon (EASM) during the Holocene. Simulations and modern observations have revealed that a strengthened EASM results in more precipitation in the monsoon marginal zone. Therefore, quantitative reconstruction of precipitation in this region is the key to revealing monsoon var...

Dithionite-citrate-bicarbonate (DCB) treatment is a classical method for removing iron oxides from soil. The DCB-induced dissolution effects on iron oxides are controversial. In this paper, samples from a typical loess-paleosol sequence in the Chinese Loess Plateau (CLP) and from other aeolian dust deposits in southern China were collected, and cha...

Loess sequences are widely distributed in semi-arid regions around the world, and are sometimes also located in coastal zones. The accumulations of coastal loess provide a valuable record of both climate and sea-level changes. Here we report sedimentological and high sampling resolution luminescence dating evidence for such changes from two loess s...

Variations of precipitation in tropical-subtropical regions are fundamentally important to human sustainable development. However, the dominant cyclicity and the mechanism of orbital-scale precipitation variations remain under extensive debate. Here, we used a newly drilled core from the Tianyang (TY) maar lake (South China) to reconstruct Asian mo...

Upstream knickpoint propagation is an essential mechanism for channel erosion, carrying changes in base level, tectonic, and climate across the landscape. Generally, the terraces on cross-sections at steady-state conditions have been widely reported. However, many landscapes in the field appear to be in a transient state. Here, we explore the mecha...

River aggradation or incision at different spatial-temporal scales are governed by tec-tonics, climate change, and surface processes which all adjust the ratio of sediment load to transport capacity of a channel. But how the river responds to differential tectonic and extreme climate events in a catchment is still poorly understood. Here, we addres...

The variability and dynamics of the Asian monsoon (AM, hereafter indicates both of the summer and winter monsoons.) at orbital and millennial timescales has attracted wide interest. Chinese loess deposits, covering an area of ~500 × 10 3 km 2 and with a thickness of several tens to more than three hundred meters, is an ideal continental archive to...

Climate factors, including precipitation and related vegetation cover, which are vital features of monsoon climates, differ across global/regional areas and are highly variable on a catchment scale. The correlation between fluvial processes and the phases of monsoon climate change are poorly understood in the north-eastern Tibetan Plateau (NETP), p...

Variability in East Asian summer monsoon precipitation during the Holocene remains of debate. In this study, we use a closed lake with well‐dated lake beach ridges located on the margin of the East Asian summer monsoon, a region highly sensitive to monsoon precipitation changes, to obtain a temporal sequence of water volume in North China. The elev...

Dune systems can have alternative stable states that coexist under certain environmental conditions: a vegetated, stabilized state and a bare active state. This behavior implies the possibility of abrupt transitions from one state to another in response to gradual environmental change. Here, we synthesize stratigraphic records covering 12,000 years...

The Quaternary wind-blown Chinese loess-paleosol sequence, which developed as a product of the intensification of Northern Hemisphere glacial-interglacial cycles, is a major source of information on aridification of the Asian interior. In northeastern (NE) China, extensive loess deposits occur that have great potential for reconstructing the long-t...

The relationship between geomorphological evolution and human activities is an important issue in geography research. The Yangshao site in Mianchi County, Henan Provence, is one of the most significant Neolithic pottery cultures in the Yellow River Basin. This study takes Xigou Gully in the Yangshao site in Mianchi County as a research object, and...

We investigated climate niches of grasses at regional scales and quantitatively reconstruct Asian monsoon precipitation at the sand-loess transitional zone in northern China. Our results provide direct evidence that certain grass lineages have been specialized in specific habitats: Pooideae grasses stand out and occupy a much cooler environment tha...

As a significant component of the global climate system, the East Asian monsoon (EAM) is crucial in understanding general climate change. The response of sensitivity and extent of the EAM to orbital-timescale climate change remains controversial. The composition of oxygen isotopes of authigenic (pedogenic) carbonate in loess deposits from the North...

Alluvial-fan successions record changes in hydrological processes and environments that may reflect tectonic activity, climate conditions and changes, intrinsic geomorphic changes, or combinations of these factors. Here, we focus on the evolution of a stream-dominated fan in a tectonic depression of the Xining basin of China, laid down under a semi...

Recent chronological studies have revealed significant site-specific variations in loess sedimentation, which challenge the use of loess deposits as continuous, easily analyzable paleoclimate and dust records. However, the regional comparability of loess sedimentation at subglacial-interglacial time scales has not yet been systematically tested. Th...

The Hunshandake Sandy Land (Hunshandake) in central Inner Mongolia, China, is located within the fringe of the East Asian summer monsoon (EASM) domains. Precipitation records in Hunshandake are essential to studying the migrations of the EASM. This work reproduced the precipitation changes since the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM) by measuring the magne...

The Hulunbuir dune field is located at the northern margin of the temperate monsoon zone in East Asia, and changes in dune activity and pedogenesis in the dune field are highly sensitive to the advance and retreat of the East Asian summer monsoon (EASM) and to human activity. Thus, the stratigraphic sequences of paleosol and aeolian sand of the dun...

Interactions of fluvial and eolian processes are prominent in dryland environments and can significantly change Earth surface morphology. Here, we report on sediment records of eolian and fluvial interactions since the last glacial period, in the semiarid area of northwest China, at the limit of the Southeast Asian monsoon. Sediment sequences of la...

The Hunshandake Sandy Land, which is highly sensitive to climate change, is located in North China along the margins of the area influenced by the East Asian monsoon. The upper reach of the Xilamulun River, which drains the Hunshandake Sandy Land, provides an opportunity to test the response of a river landform within a sandy region to climate chan...

The stable carbon isotopic composition of organic matter of aeolian silt deposits is regarded as an appropriate proxy index of paleovegetation, especially in the Chinese Loess Plateau in central China. In this study, a loess-paleosol sequence in the southeastern Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region in northeastern (NE) China, which is located outside t...

Sand-loess sequences in the desert-loess transition zone are sensitive terrestrial archives for recording past climatic changes and atmospheric dust activities. However, a high-resolution chronology for relative long-term sand-loess sequences is still rare. In this study, we used quartz SAR OSL and K-feldspar pIRIR (pIRIR290) methods to date a 16.8...

Dating ice cores drilled in the high mountain glaciers is difficult because seasonal variations cannot be traced at depth due to rapid thinning of the ice layers. Here we provide the first luminescence dating of the basal sediment of the Chongce ice cap in the north-western Tibetan Plateau. Assuming the sediment is of similar (or older) age as the...

Paleo-dune deposits have been widely used as a proxy indicator of past dune activity, which is further used to reconstruct paleoclimates. However, recent studies have critically examined the reproducibility of dune chronologies and the complexity of paleo-dune deposits as paleoenvironmental records. This paper addresses questions on the paleoenviro...

Loess deposits in Xiashu are representative of such deposits in Southeastern China that are mainly distributed in the middle and lower reaches of the Yangtze River valley. These loess-paleosol sequences provide a key archive of past climate change in humid, subtropical regions. However, the ages of the sequences are not well constrained. In this st...

Geomorphologically, alluvial deposits in river systems are expected to be older on higher terraces than on the lower terraces. However, loess deposits of aeolian origin may also occur on the surface of terrace systems and as seen in the Chinese Loess Plateau (CLP). Such loess is continuously, rather than episodically deposited. This study presents...

Loess deposits are regarded as good indicators of the inception and development of arid and semi-arid climate in central Asia and northern China during the late Cenozoic. In northeastern China extensive loess deposits are found surrounding the Horqin and Otindag sand fields, and they have great potential for reconstructing the long-term aridificati...

The West Liao River Basin is the hub of ancient civilizations as well as the birthplace of rain-fed agriculture in Northern China. In the present study, based on 276 archaeological sites on the south bank of the Xar Moron River, Northeastern China, we trace the changes in prehistoric cultures as well as the shifts in the spatial and temporal patter...

Cultural studies of Neolithic China have focused on the social aspects and the human–environment interactions associated with those cultures. However, the uneven spatial distribution of Neolithic sites in Northeastern China has not yet been explored. This study traces the relationship between human settlement patterns and the agro-ecological enviro...

The Homo erectus cranium, mandible and hundreds of associated lithic artifacts found in Lantian (central China) in the 1960s demonstrate that the area was important for hominin habitation during the early to middle Pleistocene. However, the region, which was not adequately researched until the early 2000s, still poses several questions regarding ho...

In this study, we report standard quartz SAR OSL and post-IR infrared (IR) stimulated luminescence (post-IR IRSL; pIRIR290) measurements made on sand-sized quartz and K-feldspar extracts from the loess-palaeosol sequence at Niuyangzigou in northeastern China. The quartz OSL characteristics are satisfactory. Extensive pIRIR50,290 dose recovery tests...

Luminescence dating of loess accumulation in China has raised questions over disturbance and gaps in the record, the magnitude of mass accumulation rates (MARs), and monsoon forcing mechanisms. Here we present a detailed quartz optically stimulated luminescence (OSL) chronology from the Xifeng Chinese Loess Plateau site. We reconstruct MARs and con...

There has been a significant debate about the nature and causes of the Pleistocene evolution of the Nihewan Basin, North China. We studied the eastern Nihewan Basin sedimentary facies at two main sites, Hutouliang and Donggou. A combination of field observations and measurements of sediment grain-size distribution was used to reconstruct the sequen...

Luminescence dating at the Luochuan loess type section (China) section is at present limited to ∼0.1 Ma using quartz blue light stimulated luminescence (BLSL), but can be extended back in time to ∼0.5 Ma by resorting to the more developmental post-infrared infrared stimulated luminescence (post-IR IRSL) and thermally transferred OSL (TT-OSL) signal...

Little is known about the long-term climatic evolution of north-eastern (NE) China, because well-preserved terrestrial paleoenvironmental archives are scarce in this vast region. The extensive loess deposits in the Chifeng region are the thickest and most complete loess–paleosol sequence in NE China, and have significant potential for reconstructin...

Geological records of climate change since the last glaciation in South China, a core area of the East Asian monsoon, are key to understanding secular variation in the monsoon system. However, with the exception of the speleothems, records from this area with independent age control are few. We investigated aeolian sand deposition on a sand hill on...

One significant change of terrestrial landscapes in response to past climate change has been the transformation between activity and stability of extensively distributed wind-blown sand dunes. The relations between the dynamics of the aeolian landscape and its drivers are not yet completely understood, however. Evidence of aeolian sand deposition d...

The substantial tectonic uplift (1000-2500 m in a few million years) of the Northeastern Tibetan Plateau (NETP), together with the major climatic changes during the Quaternary, provides an opportunity to study the impact of tectonic and climatic changes on the morphological development and sedimentary architecture of fluvial deposits. The effects o...

Showing features associated with archaic Homo sapiens and evolved Homo erectus, the Dali skull is a key fossil for understanding human evolution in China. Various dating methods such as U-series, IRSL, TL, ESR, ESR/U-series, and stratigraphical correlation with central Loess Plateau sequence were used to estimate the antiquity the Dali Man site wit...

Since 2010, we have found stone artifacts at the Houfang and Dishuiyan loess sections on the second terrace of the Hanjiang River and the Wolonggang thick natural loess section on the fifth terrace of the same river near the Xuetangliangzi site. We dated Dishuiyan and Houfang loess sections by optically stimulated luminescence (OSL) and thermally t...

The response of surface processes to global climatic changes since the last glacial is critical to understanding the mechanism of climatic changes on the Tibetan Plateau. In this study, loess from the northeastern Tibetan Plateau (NETP) was dated to provide an independent high-resolution record of dust accumulation processes and millennial-scale cl...

We present the first quantitative estimation of monsoon precipitation during the late glacial-Holocene in the sandy land of northern China, based on organic carbon isotopic composition data from a loess-sand sequence at margin of the Mu Us sandy land. We use the relationship between monsoon precipitation and the carbon isotopic composition of moder...

The chronology of dust deposition and climate during the last interglacial is poorly known on the Chinese Loess Plateau. Here, 51 samples were taken from the ∼5 m S1 palaeosol (MIS5) at the desert marginal Jingbian site to develop what is currently the most detailed S1 chronology on the Plateau using instrumental dating techniques. We use the post-...

Understanding the stable carbon isotopic composition (δ13C) of surface soil organic matter under various climates is crucial for quantitative reconstruction of past climatic changes. Although the relationship between precipitation and plant δ13C is well understood at global and regional scale, studies relating δ13C of surface soil organic matter to...

Eight new Palaeolithic open-air sites were identified and 770 stone artefacts were collected from 2009 to 2011 in the Lantian area of the Bahe River valley, central China. Because the famous Homo erectus fossils were unearthed at the Gongwangling and Chenjiawo localities, and more than 30 Palaeolithic open-air sites were investigated in the 1960s i...

In the Northeastern Tibetan Plateau (NETP), the courses of the Huang Shui and Huang He near their confluence are characterized by alternating gorges and wide depressions, segmenting the fluvial systems. The river valleys have developed terrace staircases, which are used to infer relative tectonic motions between the segments. The terrace staircases...

The Tibetan Plateau is regarded as an amplifier and driver of environmental change in adjacent regions because of its extent and high altitude. However, reliable age control for paleoenvironmental information on the plateau is limited. OSL appears to be a valid method to constrain the age of deposits of glacial and fluvial origin, soils and perigla...

Paleoclimatic research can provide critical insight on causes of change in the East Asian monsoon, which influences the lives of 1.6 billion people today. In this study, we use paleoclimatic indexes from Chinese loess deposits, which have clear climatic implications and are independently dated, to reconstruct the monsoon precipitation since 21 ka....

The Last Glacial Maximum (LGM, c. 26-16 ka) and the Holocene Optimum (HO, c. 9-5 ka) were characterized by cold-dry and warm-wet climates respectively in the recently geological Earth. How Chinese deserts and sand fields responded to these distinctive climatic changes is still not clear, however. To reconstruct environments of the deserts and sand...

In northern China, environmental changes in the transitional zone from the sandy desert to the loess plateau have been regarded as an important issue in the understanding of climate changes and the remains of hominin activities found in this zone provide a solid line of evidence to support the reconstruction of environmental conditions during the l...

Dating middle Pleistocene hominin occupations alongside the reconstruction of paleoenvironments in China between 700 and 100 ka has always been a challenging task. In this paper, we report thermally transferred optically stimulated luminescence (TT-OSL) dating results for a Middle Paleolithic site in the Luonan Basin, central China, which we have n...

Reconstruction of a complete Quaternary record of climatic changes in the northeastern Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau is not well obtained, because of high relief and extensive surface erosion. In this study, two long cores obtained from thick loess deposits in the region, both contain clear alternations of loess and paleosols, indicating distinct climate...

Palaeoclimatic change in northeastern China during the late Quaternary remains poorly understood. This is partly because of the scarcity of detailed investigations into archives in the region, but especially because of the lack of an appropriate dating method to obtain age control for the area's loess deposits. In this paper, the single-aliquot reg...

Thermally transferred optically stimulated luminescence (TT-OSL) dating extends the age range beyond current limits of OSL dating in Chinese loess. In this study, we use a single-aliquot regenerative-dose procedure for TT-OSL protocol to date Yaochangwan and Hejialiang localities of loess-covered Liangshan Paleolithic sites in Hanzhong Basin, which...

Using a set of modern/young (0 to about 200 years old) dust samples collected from the Chinese Loess Plateau the bleachability of IRSL measured at 50°C (IR50) and post-IR50 elevated temperature IRSL (measured at 225°C and at 290°C) is investigated by measuring the apparent (residual) doses recorded by these signals. Doses recorded by quartz OSL are...

This paper draws on recent optically stimulated luminescence (OSL) dating to evaluate the long-held assumption that dust accumulation rates in the Loess Plateau and the extent of active aeolian sand in the dunefields to the north have varied together over time, because both are controlled by the strength of the Asian monsoons and also possibly beca...

Previous palaeoclimatic studies in the northeastern Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau (NETP) during the Holocene, mainly using lake sediments, have deepened our understanding of the climatic system in this remote region. The timing and forcing mechanisms of climatic change in this region are still controversial, however. Aeolian sand and silt deposits, which...

A newly discovered Paleolithic site in loess deposits in the Lushi Basin, South Luo River, central China, is dated using pedostratigraphic analysis, optically stimulated luminescence (OSL) and magnetostratigraphic analysis. This region is regarded as an important place for hominin occupation and settlement during the early to middle Pleistocene. Re...

Sand hills are mainly composed of aeolian sands developed along the north shore of the Poyang Lake. The sand hill at Shaling is situated in Liaohua town of Xingzi county. The relative height of this sand hill is about 100 m and it covers an area of about 10 km2. Ridgslike landform develops on the side facing the Poyang Lake. These ridges trending t...