Changes in regional religious activities in the last millennium recorded by black carbon in Lake Dalzong,northeastern Tibetan Plateau

The ecological environment of the Tibetan Plateau,known as the“Third Pole of the Earth”,is extremely sensitive and fragile.With rapid societal development,environmental problems on the Tibetan Plateau have become prominent,as it is downwind of the emission sources from densely populated areas in the Middle East and South Asia,and the plateau has become one of the regions significantly affected by transboundary pollutant transmission(including black carbon,BC).The Tibetan Plateau has a long history of life and religious sacrifices,including aromatic plant-burning,which were recorded in the geologic record;therefore,BC can be used as a potential indicator to study the changes in religious activities.In this study,BC analysis was carried out based on the plausible dating framework tested by the AMS14C and137Cs methods on successive sediment cores from Lake Dalzong,an alpine lake in the Gannan Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture,northeast of the Tibetan Plateau.It was found that the BC in the lake sediments mainly accumulated through proximity wet deposition,and its content changes reflected the prevalence of surrounding religious activities.The study results indicate that the area of Lake Dalzong has experienced three periods of enhanced religious activities in the last millennium:1490-1565 CE(mid-Ming Dynasty),1810-1890 CE(late Qing Dynasty),and 1920 CE to the present(since the founding of the Republic of China),and the increase in religious activities on this centennial time scale is a response to concurrent social development.This study is the first to extract information on the variation in religious activities from lake sediments on the Tibetan Plateau,which will help advance the study of the historical context of the Anthropocene on the Tibetan Plateau.

Erratum to:Holocene temperature variation recorded by branched glycerol dialkyl glycerol tetraethers in a loess-paleosol sequence from the north-eastern Tibetan Plateau

Erratum to:Front.Earth Sci.DOI 10.1007/s11707-023-1094-6 The original version of this article unfortunately contained a mistake.The presentation of was incorrect.The corrected figure is given below.

Holocene temperature variation recorded by branched glycerol dialkyl glycerol tetraethers in a loess-paleosol sequence from the north-eastern Tibetan Plateau

Reconstructing Holocene temperature evolution is important for understanding present temperature variations and for predicting future climate change,in the context of global warming.The evolution of Holocene global temperature remains disputed,due to differences between proxy reconstructions and model simulations,a discrepancy known as the῾Holocene temperature conundrum᾽.More reliable and quantitative terrestrial temperature records are needed to resolve the spatial heterogeneity of existing records.In this study,based on the analysis of branched glycerol dialkyl glycerol tetraethers(brGDGTs)from a loess-paleosol sequence from the Ganjia Basin in the north-eastern Tibetan Plateau(NETP),we quantitatively reconstructed the mean annual air temperature(MAAT)over the past 12 ka.The MAAT reconstruction shows that the temperature remained low during the early Holocene(12−8 ka),followed by a rapid warming at around 8 ka.From 8 to 4 ka,the MAAT record reached its highest level,followed by a cooling trend from the late Holocene(4−0 ka).The variability of the reconstructed MAAT is consistent with trends of annual temperature records from the Tibetan Plateau(TP)during the Holocene.We attribute the relatively low temperatures during the early Holocene to the existence of ice sheets at high-latitude regions in the Northern Hemisphere and the weaker annual mean insolation at 35°N.During the mid to late Holocene,the long-term cooling trend in the annual temperature record was primarily driven by declining summer insolation.This study provides key geological evidence for clarifying Holocene temperature change in the TP.