The program of Spatiotemporal Patterns of Environmental Changes in China during the Past 2000 Years supported by the Ecological and Environmental Sciences Innovation Base, Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), includes five projects. They are “East Asian Monsoon and its Interactions with Human (led by GE Quansheng)”, Climate Change Processes and Mechanisms of Monsoon-Arid Transition Belt during the Past 2000 Years” (led by XIAO Jule and TAN Ming), “Response Processes and Mechanisms to Global Changes in Temperate-glacier Regions of China” (led by HE Yuanqing), “Inter-annual and Inter-decadal Temperature Change Processes and Ecological Responses in Coral Reefs in the South China Sea during the Past 4000 Years”(led by YU Kefu) and “Quantitative Study of Historical Process of Typical Lakes and Human Activities Influences over the Middle-lower Reaches of Yangtze River” (led by WU Yanhong).

Many important progresses have been achieved in 2008: (1) all projects accomplished the 2008 work plans and published valuable papers, and the cross composites with different climate proxy records have successfully been implemented. (2)Some new ideas and methods are utilized to solve key scientific issues, such as reconstructing East Asian summer monsoon index using tree-rings data from non-monsoon areas, diagnosing the mechanism of long-term monsoon changes at millennium scale by global modeling simulation results, discussing Meiyu variation over the Middle and Lower Reaches of Yangtze River region by a kind of Chinese historical document Yu-Xue-Fen-Cun, addressing long-term climate changes characteristics in Tibet, Northwest, Northeast, Central east and Southeast regions. The extreme climate events (low temperatures and storms) derived from coral reef records achieved breakthrough in methods. Meanwhile there are significant progress in the climatic interpretation of δ¹⁸O in stalagmite to monsoon systems, physical and chemical indicators in lake sediments to climate and human activities and temperate-glaciers to climate changes. (3) Each project has published several articles on international SCI journals (impact factor > 2.0).

This program will focus on crosscutting research in 2009, especially in the modern processes based on the inherent linkages and interaction of multi-elements among different regions and the changing process of spatial patterns. Data share with the different groups should be strengthened.

By Dr. Zhixin HAO, Physical Environment Change and Pattern Laboratory