Late Holocene vegetation, climate, and lake changes in northern China: Varved evidence from western Loess Plateau

High-resolution archives deepen the understanding of past climate variability. We report new sedimentological and paleoecological data from Chaona Lake in northern China. The record represents the annually laminated (i.e., varved) archive from the western Loess Plateau spanning the Late Holocene, allowing insights into critical time intervals of decadal to centennial-scale climate instability. After developing a robust, continuously chronology supported by radioisotope dating and varve chronology, we used high-resolution palynological and sedimentological data to decipher the specific climate and ecosystem evolution over the last 2800 years. Our results show a general forest decline and climate deterioration intercalated with a series of oscillations during the Late Holocene, which may have profoundly influenced the eco-social development of northern China. In addition, lake development changes that mainly reflect the transformation from deep to shallow lake conditions generally match the regional vegetation, which is probably driven by climate-related processes. However, fluctuations in well or poor and the absence of varved sediment indicate variations in the water circulation in the lake catchment. Periods of predominantly well-varved sediments are considered to reflect reduced lake circulation and more anoxic conditions, coinciding with warmer and more stable climate intervals, such as the Roman Warm Period and the Medieval Warm Period. Conversely, periods of poor or even non-varved preservation indicate strengthened lake circulation, which may be influenced by strong winds (e.g., 2800–2000 cal yr BP) and cold/drought conditions (e.g., the Little Ice Age). Integration of our data with those of published climatic reconstructions in northern and eastern monsoon China suggests that this variability in climate can be explained by shifts in solar insolation and large-scale ocean-atmospheric coupling dynamics that affect the Loess Plateau (e.g., the East Asia Summer Monsoon and El Niño-Southern Oscillation).