Millennium tree-ring reconstruction of drought variability in the eastern Qilian Mountains, northwest China

Gou, Xiaohua; Deng, Yang; Gao, Linlin; Chen, Fahu; Cook, Edward R.; Yang, Meixue; Zhang, Fen

doi:10.1007/s00382-014-2431-y

Cited by 95 publications

(58 citation statements)

References 45 publications

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“…Historical precipitation in the HRB were derived from Yang et al’s () reconstructed annual precipitation in the Qilian Mountain over the past 3,500 years based on tree ring records. Both T and P records showed high consistency with other reconstructed results in Northwest China (Gou et al, ; Liu, Henderson, & Huang, ) and have been widely used for long‐term climate change studies (Chen et al, ; Wang, Yang, et al, ). Streamflow is the major water source in the cultivated oases in the HRB, therefore, total annual streamflow ( Q ) was considered as a key variable.…”

Section: Methodssupporting

confidence: 65%

Cultivated oasis evolution in the Heihe River Basin over the past 2,000 years

et al. 2018

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Cultivated oases play an important role in supporting human civilization in arid regions. Few quantitative analyses have been conducted on the influence of natural disturbances and human interventions on this fragile system over a long timescale. This paper presents an empirical study to investigate the quantitative relationship between cultivated oasis evolution and a set of natural and human factors in Heihe River Basin (HRB) over a timeframe of approximately 2,000 years (206 BC–1949 AD). Multiple data sources, including documentary records, historical atlas reconstruction data, and published papers, were used. Stepwise multiple linear regression analysis was adopted to quantify any significant contributions of the selected variables. The results showed that cultivated oasis in the HRB had experienced substantial fluctuations. Population size, agricultural policies, military clashes, and grain yield per unit area were 4 major human related factors determining historical cultivated oasis development, while flood was the only significant natural factor. In combination of similar studies in recent decades, this study shows that the dynamics of oasis development and its transition is important for determination of the sustainable size of a cultivated oasis in the HRB.

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Section: Methodssupporting

confidence: 65%

Cultivated oasis evolution in the Heihe River Basin over the past 2,000 years

et al. 2018

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“…Due to the lack of precise environmental moisture data for 1820, the present moisture spatial pattern of moisture was used in this study. However, the climate proxy data shows that there may have been significant climate changes from 1820, which was in the period of the Little Ice Age, to 2000 [52]. Additionally, this study used the quantitative relations between the population density and distance to the nearest city derived from data for 2000 in the 1820 reconstruction.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Spatially Explicit Mapping of Historical Population Density with Random Forest Regression: A Case Study of Gansu Province, China, in 1820 and 2000

Wang

Zheng

et al. 2020

Sustainability

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This study established a random forest regression model (RFRM) using terrain factors, climatic and river factors, distances to the capitals of provinces, prefectures (Fu, in Chinese Pinyin), and counties as independent variables to predict the population density. Then, using the RFRM, we explicitly reconstructed the spatial distribution of the population density of Gansu Province, China, in 1820 and 2000, at a resolution of 10 by 10 km. By comparing the explicit reconstruction with census data at the township level from 2000, we found that the RFRM-based approach mostly reproduced the spatial variability in the population density, with a determination coefficient (R 2 ) of 0.82, a positive reduction of error (RE, 0.72) and a coefficient of efficiency (CE) of 0.65. The RFRM-based reconstructions show that the population of Gansu Province in 1820 was mostly distributed in the Lanzhou, Gongchang, Pingliang, Qinzhou, Qingyang, and Ningxia prefecture. The macro-spatial pattern of the population density in 2000 kept approximately similar with that in 1820. However, fine differences could be found. The 79.92% of the population growth of Gansu Province from 1820 to 2000 occurred in areas lower than 2500 m. As a result, the population weighting in the areas above 2500 m was~9% in 1820 while it was greater than 14% in 2000. Moreover, in comparison to 1820, the population density intensified in Lanzhou, Xining, Yinchuan, Baiyin, Linxia, and Tianshui, while it weakened in Gongchang, Qingyang, Ganzhou, and Suzhou.Sustainability 2020, 12, 1231 2 of 16 of population with regular grid cells and can be used to reveal the pattern of population growth and migration [5]. Furthermore, the gridded historical population datasets are widely used in the historical reconstruction of land use and land cover change (LUCC), such as the conversion from woodland to cropland, which is conducive to the quantitative estimations of carbon emissions in historical periods [6][7][8]. Therefore, there has been a large demand to determine the explicit spatial distribution of population.To date, there are a large number of global-and national-scale gridded population datasets including the Gridded Population of the World (GPW), Global Rural-Urban Mapping Project (GRUMP), WorldPop datasets, and China 1 km Gridded Population (CnPop) datasets [9]. These datasets played critical roles in resource allocation and management [10], climate change research [11,12], disease risk assessment [13], and other fields. These existing studies mostly focused on modern times; however, there are a few population gridded datasets for historical periods. This may be partly explained by the lack of documented historical census data.Overall, the modelling approaches of most population gridded datasets can be divided into two categories: a spatial interpolation (SITP) approach and multi-factor integration (MFI) approach. The SITP approach is based on geo-statistics. Under the SITP approach, population density is represented as a function of location, i.e., the X-coordinate and ...

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“…To analyse drought's impact on tree growth, the SPEI was also used. The SPEI is a widely used drought indices in the past several years, and it has been successfully used for drought assessment and drought reconstruction in China (Bao et al, 2014;Gou et al, 2015;Chen et al, 2015;Ren et al, 2015). The SPEI data used in this study were computed on a 12-month scale by using the monthly climate series at Minxian station, as well as the algorithm developed by Vicente-Serrano et al (2010).…”

Section: Climate Datamentioning

confidence: 99%

Tree‐ring recorded drought variability in the northern Min Mountains of northwestern China

Deng

Gou

Gao

et al. 2015

Intl Journal of Climatology

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Drought is a recurrent natural disaster in northwestern China and it can have a substantial impact on the affected region; therefore, knowledge of drought variability is very important for drought adaptation and mitigation. However, the observed climate data are generally limited in length, which may hamper our understanding the full range of drought variability. Using tree‐ring width measurements of 155 series from 81 Pinus tabulaeformis trees at three sites in the northern Min Mountains of northwestern China, the standardized precipitation evapotranspiration index (SPEI) for May–August from 1804 to 2011 were reconstructed, which account for 64.8% of the variance in the instrumental record over 1954–2011. The new reconstruction is generally consistent with other moisture reconstructions nearby. Two notable features of the SPEI reconstruction is the severe drought starting in the late 1990s and the gradual drying trend since 1954. These features are also apparent in areas located in the north boundaries of Eastern Asian Summer Monsoon (EASM), which indicates that the study area may be affected by the EASM.

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Millennium tree-ring reconstruction of drought variability in the eastern Qilian Mountains, northwest China

Cited by 95 publications

References 45 publications

Cultivated oasis evolution in the Heihe River Basin over the past 2,000 years

Cultivated oasis evolution in the Heihe River Basin over the past 2,000 years

Spatially Explicit Mapping of Historical Population Density with Random Forest Regression: A Case Study of Gansu Province, China, in 1820 and 2000

Tree‐ring recorded drought variability in the northern Min Mountains of northwestern China

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