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The Shiyang River drainage basin is located in the northwest margin of the Asian monsoon region. Previous studies reached different conclusions about Holocene climatic changes in the basin. Some studies suggested the Holocene climatic changes were mainly controlled by the Asian monsoon and that the climate was relatively humid during the early Holocene (11.6--7.1 cal ka BP). Other studies found the mid-Holocene Climatic Optimum (7.0--5.0 cal ka BP), and this climate condition was similar to the Holocene westerly wind pattern in arid Central Asia. The modern climate is affected by the Asian monsoon and westerly wind in the drainage basin, and the Holocene climatic records showed two different Holocene climatic patterns--a westerly wind pattern and monsoonal pattern. However, it remains unclear what caused the two different Holocene climatic patterns to co-exist in the region. The palynological records are the main evidence for the Holocene climatic changes in the basin. This paper focuses on palynological records for different parts of the drainage basin. Among them, QTH02, QTL-03 and Sanjiaocheng records are located in the terminal lake, and the Hongshuihe record is located in the middle reaches of the basin. In the terminal lake, the palynological records of QTH02 and QTL-03 are similar, but the Sanjiaocheng record differs. The difference is mainly affected by the variable pollen assemblages in the different locations of the lake basin. From comparison and synthesis of the four palynological records, we concluded that the millennial-scale Holocene climatic changes were affected by the combined effects of the Asian monsoon and westerly wind in the drainage basin, which show the complicated Holocene climatic pattern in the northwest margin of the Asian monsoon. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Climate change and hydrologic process response in the Tarim River Basin over the past 50 years are the tocus of more and more researchers' attention. In this paper, both temperature and precipitation time series were found to present a monotonic increasing trend using nonparametric tests. Noticeably, a significant step change in both temperature and precipitation time series occurred in 1986. By contrasting the trends of natural water process in headstream and mainstream, we found that it was anthropogenic activities not climate change that caused the river dried up and vegetation degenerated in the lower reaches of Tarim River. The results of gray correlation analysis show that the runoff of higher latitude distributing river is more closely associated with winter snow stocking, while that of lower latitude is more closely related to summer temperature. Runoff in the headstream is more sensitive to precipitation, while that in the mainstream is more sensitive to evaporation. The strong evaporation caused by increasing temperature weakened runoff to some extent in spite of the fact that precipitation increased over the past 50 years. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]