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Quantifying the relative influences of anthropogenic activities and climate change on soil erosion and deposition during the Holocene, when both forces have been interacting is a complex problem. Analysis of long-term patterns in soil erosion and lake deposition in a basin can provide the basis for untangling the complexities of climate and anthropogenic forcings. In this paper, sedimentary sequences from Xingyun Lake are compared with simulated soil erosion rates in the basin to explore the relationship between river basin soil erosion and lake deposition during the Holocene in Yunnan, China. Modern soil erosion rates are calculated using RUSLE, while Holocene soil erosion rates are estimated using modern rates with reconstructed precipitation and vegetation cover sequences. Through this investigation, we found the following results. First, Holocene vegetation in the lake basin was mainly affected by climate change, and the vegetation experienced the same pattern of changes as the climate. Soil erosion and lake deposition rates, along with changes to vegetation cover, were synchronous with precipitation trends during the Holocene. Second, soil erosion and lake deposition have been exacerbated by human activities, such as deforestation and land reclamation in the Xingyun Lake basin. Finally, this study provides new insights into the effects by anthropogenic impacts and climate forcing on the processes of soil erosion and lake deposition on the millennium scale. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Quantitative records of pre-industrial temperature changes are fundamental for understanding long-term natural climate variability. We used visible reflectance spectroscopy to measure chlorophyll content (and its derivatives) in a sediment core from Kurupa Lake, north-central Brooks Range, Alaska, to reconstruct summer temperature and the number of annual non-freezing days over the past 5.7 ka. A calibration-in-time approach was used to convert downcore changes in chlorophyll content to the climate variables, and an ensemble approach was used to integrate age and calibration uncertainties. The strongest correlation (rmedian = 0.69, pmedian = 0.02, RMSEP = 1.9°C) is for summer (June through September) temperature using the 20th Century Reanalysis Project dataset. The chlorophyll-inferred 3-year-mean summer temperature shows that the warmest century (3.0–2.9 ka BP) was about 3.0°C (90% range of the ensemble members = 2.3–4.0°C) higher and that the coldest century (1.4–1.3 ka BP) was about 5.5°C lower (90% range = −7.6°C to −5.0°C) than during the reference period (AD 1961–1990). Century-to-century temperature changes over the past 5.7 ka at Kurupa Lake have been large (90% range = −2.8°C to 3.1°C shifts in centennial mean), including the shift between the 19th and 20th centuries, which was above the 90th percentile of temperature changes across all representations of the reconstruction. In contrast to most Northern Hemisphere temperature reconstructions, Kurupa Lake shows no overall millennial-scale cooling trend. We suggest that increased summer duration (by 4.3 days during the last 6 ka) along with no long-term increase in sea-ice cover over the adjacent Chukchi Sea counter-balanced the influence of decreased insolation intensity on the aquatic productivity in Kurupa Lake. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

A detailed understanding of decadal to millennial-scale climate changes requires seasonal-scale (summer-winter) reconstructions of past precipitation and temperature fluctuations. Comparing seasonally resolved varve records with pollen-based sum of growing degree-days (GDD) reconstructions from Lake Nautajärvi, we examined the intra-annual nature of climate variability in central southern Finland during the Holocene. The organic varve record and the GDD reconstruction show roughly comparable trends supporting the interpretation that both proxies predominantly reflect summer temperatures in the study area. The records suggest low but rising early-Holocene (9500 to 8500 cal. yr BP) summer temperatures. The Holocene Thermal Maximum (HTM) in the GDD record dates to about 7500 to 4500 cal. yr BP, but the organic varve record along with reconstructed changes in vegetation composition, notably a peak of Tilia pollen percentages, indicate that during the HTM there was a trend towards a more continental climate with maximum mid-summer temperatures reached at 6500 to 4500 cal. yr BP. Both records reflect the start of the post-HTM cooling at about 4500 cal. yr BP, simultaneously with an increase of the amount of catchment erosion and mineral matter influx into the lake, suggesting gradually colder and/or longer winters with high net accumulation of snow. The organic varve record and the GDD record start to diverge at 2000 cal. yr BP, possibly owing to the human influence on catchment processes. The reconstructed mid-Holocene summer temperature peak deviates from the regional climate model outputs, which suggest highest summer temperatures during the early Holocene. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]