The geographical distribution of dominant plant species in China was georeferenced and climatic variables were interpolated into all grids.Accordingly,the percentage distributions of principal pollen taxa based on 1860 surface pollen sites in China were selected and the related climate values were interpolated with the same method. The geographical and climatic comparison between the two data-sets indicated that the climate threshold of most pollen taxa from surface pollen is coherent with plant distributions. The climatic envelopes of dominant plant are mostly accordant with those of pollen taxa at certain levels. However, some distinct offsets of the climate ranges exist between the two datasets for most pollen taxa identified at family level, such as Ericaceae,Asteraceae, Poaceae and Chenopodiaceae. The present study provides for the first time rich information on temperature and precipitation in relation to pollen and plant distribution based on the datasets on a continental scale useful for global ecological modeling and Quaternary palaeoclimate reconstruction.
Pollen analysis was carried out on the Core MD982194 of 29.78 m retrieved from the Middle Okinawa Trough which was dated as old as -200 ka BP. The results revealed that pollen assemblages mainly presented an alternation of coniferous and herb pollen. The coniferous saccate pollen, principally Pinus and Tsuga, predominated in most parts of the core, especially highlighted in the interstadial stages including MIS 1,3, 5 and MIS7, whereas the herb pollen significantly increased in the gla- cial periods. Thus the pollen flora and their percentages showed the sensitive changes under the influence of ice volume during the glacial and interglacial periods. Our record from this core has first documented that the percentage of Cyperaceae was ex- tremely high in the glacial stages with a notable increase in Artemisia, Gramineae, Asteraceae, Cbenopodiaceae, and freshwa- ter algae, which can be used as a proxy for sea-level change at the study site because of their close negative correlation of the orbital-scale changes in sea level. The distance between the continental coastline and the Okinawa Trough has deeply short- ened due to the sea-level drop in the LGM. As a result, the sediment materials from Yangtze River were extensively deposited on the flat, exposed continental shelf owing to the rapid decline of river flow speed, leading to that pollen grains from Okinawa Trough are derived mainly from the flat coastal vegetation of exposed continental shelf at glacial stages. Changes of pollen as- semblage were consistent with the variation of temperature and humidity, which showed that the percentage of arboreal pollen was highly augmented at MIS 7, 5 and MIS 1, corresponding to the strengthening of the East Asian summer monsoon and in- creasing of rainfall. Moreover, the peak of Pinus percentage in MIS 5.3, 5.1 and MIS 3.3 may be closely linked by orbital and sub-orbital cycles of solar radiation and monsoonal variability. The present study of core MD981294 implied lower tempera- ture and precipitation during the lowest sea
