Pollen-Recorded Vegetation and Climate Changes from Moon Lake since Late Glacial

Moon Lake is one of the volcanic crater lakes at the Aershan-Chaihe volcanic field in the middle part of Daxing'an Mountain Range, located at the current northern margin of the East Asian monsoon. Pollen records of 8.86 m-long sediment core of Moon Lake reveal the vegetation evolution and climate change since the Late Glacial. The result indicates predominantly steppe communities, which are typical of cold and dry climate conditions between 20.9 and 18.0 cal. ka B.P.; the meadow communities which stand for cold and damp climate conditions are present between 18.0 and 15.3 cal. ka B.P.; the beginning of expansion of arbor marks the vegetation change from meadow to forest steppe and the onset of the Late Glacial climatic amelioration towards warm and humid from 15.3 to 14.0 cal. ka B.P.; the woodland expands with the shrink of steppe under the warm and humid climate from 14.0 to 12.8 cal. ka B.P., correlating with the Bølling-Allerød climate event; the steppe expands later from 12.8 to 11.8 cal. ka B.P. effected by the cold climate, correlating with the Younger Dryas climate events; forest steppe dominates study area under warm climate from 11.8 to 0.8 cal. ka B.P. with six times steppe expansion impacted by cold climate events, which occurred at 9.0-8.9, 8.2-7.8, 7.0-6.8, 6.1-5.6, 5.4-5.2, 2.3-1.8 cal. ka B.P. during the Holocene. These climate events are comparable with other global and regional high-resolution paleoclimate records, revealing the Moon Lake sensitively record the global and regional climate change and high-resolution pollen analysis of study area is a good indicator of East Asian monsoon strength change.