Journal
QUATERNARY SCIENCE REVIEWS
Volume 246, Issue -, Pages -Publisher
PERGAMON-ELSEVIER SCIENCE LTD
DOI: 10.1016/j.quascirev.2020.106553
Keywords
Yili Basin; Central Asia; Loess; Holocene; Moisture; Evaporation; Insolation
Funding
- National Key Research and Development Program of China [2016YFA0601902]
- National Natural Science Foundation of China [41772177, 41430532]
- Strategic Priority Research Program of Chinese Academy of Sciences [XDB40010100]
- Second Tibetan Plateau Scientific Expedition and Research Program [2019QZKK0101]
- Youth Innovation Promotion Association Chinese Academy of Sciences [2018447]
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The evolution of Holocene moisture in semiarid and arid regions of Central Asia is key to understanding changes in current and future water resources, and has been a hotly debated topic in the past few decades. Central Asian loess deposits have shown potential as records of past moisture changes, particularly during the Holocene. Here, the variations in effective moisture during the Holocene in the semiarid regions of the Yili Basin, Central Asia, are obtained from three loess sections. Reliable chronologies were constructed using 26 quartz optically stimulated luminescence (OSL) ages. The strengthening pedogenesis, steady increases in magnetic susceptibility, and continuous decreases in mean grain size in the three loess sections all suggest that effective moisture continuously increased throughout the Holocene, indicating a dry early Holocene, a moderately humid middle Holocene, and a wet late Holocene. Rainfall carried by the Asian summer monsoon and the Westerlies contributes to the moisture changes in Central Asia. However, considering the dominance of evaporation over rainfall in controlling aridity-humidity shifts in this region, the continuous weakening of evaporation caused by a decrease in Northern Hemisphere summer insolation and associated atmospheric temperatures is primarily responsible for the wetting trend throughout the Holocene in the semiarid regions of the Yili Basin. (C) 2020 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
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