The crop types and agricultural characteristic are reconstructed using the archaeobiological proxies of pollen, seed and phytolith at Xishanping site in Gansu Province between 5250 and 4300 cal a BP. The agricultural activity strengthened in Xishanping from 5100 cal a BP. It appeared the earliest cultivation of prehistoric rice in the most northwest China at 5070 cal a BP. The sudden disappearance of conifers and expansion of chestnut trees is likely to be the result of selective hewing of conifers and cultivation of chestnuts at about 4600 cal a BP. There existed 8 crop types of foxtail millet, broomcorn millet, rice, wheat, barley, oats, soybean and buckwheat at Xishanping between 4650 and 4300 cal a BP, which cover the main crop types of the two origin centers of East and West Asia. Not only has the wheat and barley been approved to spread to northwestern China, but the earliest complexity agriculture in Neo-lithic China appeared in Tianshui, Gansu Province.
As a consequence of recent global warming and its social impact, regional climate change is attracting an increasing amount of attention from scientists. A May-July temperature proxy extending back to 1836 was developed from tree-ring width of Chinese pine (Pinus tabulaeformis Carr.) found in the middle Lüliang Mountains, northern China. Correlations with climatic data from six nearby meteorological stations range from -0.58 to -0.65, indicating a strong response of tree-ring index to May-July mean temperatures, which were subsequently reconstructed. The reconstruction captures 45% (F=38.474, P<0.001) of the regional variance in the instrumental data over the calibration period 1955-2003. Reconstructed warm and cold periods were verified by additional temperature reconstructions based on tree-ring data from northern China. In addition, the reconstruction was significantly corre-lated with May-July mean temperatures from 13 other meteorological stations in northern China, suggesting that our reconstruction is also representative of north-central China. The warming trend during the second half of the 20th century is seen in the reconstruction, but only the 1994-2002 mean temperature seems unprecedented over the whole reconstructed period.
Long-time series of high-resolution temperature record from Chinese Loess Plateau is rare. An April-September mean temperature reconstruction (1826-2004) has been developed for the north-central Shaanxi Province, China, based on tree-ring width analysis. The reconstruction captures 39.3% (p<0.001) of the variance in the instrumental data over the calibration period from 1951 to 2002. The reconstruction shows a high temperature period of 1928-1933, which coincides with the timing of the extreme drought event in 1920s in the entire northern China. The two low temperature periods in reconstruction are 1883-1888 and 1938-1942. With the global warming, the April-September mean temperature in study area has also increased since the 1970s, but has not exceeded the temperature in 1928-1933. Besides the statistical analysis, the reconstruction is also verified by the local dryness/wetness index and other dendroclimatological results.
