A review of the studies on modern process for climatic proxies in north-western China

Abstract

This paper reviews the modern process studies for four types of proxies (tree-ring, biologic indicators, physical proxies and geochemical indexes) in arid north-western China for the purpose of better understanding their environmental indication for reconstructing paleoenvironment and paleoclimate. These proxies are affected by many variables in some cases, such as temperature, precipitation, pH, topography etc., and their indicative meanings may become complex sometimes. For this reason, multiple proxies might be used to complement each other if conditions permit. Moreover, potential differences of each proxy should be taken into consideration when they were used. This paper indicates the application of each modern process proxy and their advantages and disadvantages, so as to give some references to fossil data interpretation and environment reconstruction in arid north-western China.

Keywords

modern process / north-western China / climate change / paleoenvironment / paleoclimate

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Acknowledgements

The research was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant Nos. 40771212 and 40721061) and the National Basic Research Program of China (No. 2010CB950202).

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2014 Higher Education Press and Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg