Understanding past climate and vegetation changes is essential to assessing the role of climate and human activity in dominating regional vegetation compositions. Here we show a wetting trend from mid- to late-Holocene over subtropical East Asia based on peat cellulose δ¹⁸O and a compilation of other robust hydroclimatic records. Under such a wetter condition, subtropical East Asia is expected to be covered by denser forests. However, our peat pollen records, together with those of other studies, show that the vegetation composition did not follow as envisaged but changed from evergreen broad-leaved forests to more open landscapes since the late Holocene over the extended subtropical East Asia. We ascribe this dramatic vegetation shift to the contemporaneous enhanced human activities, which is further confirmed by the sharp increases in peat charcoal concentrations and the number of regional archaeological sites. Proper policies are therefore necessary to protect the regional ecology and sustainability.

了解过去的气候和植被变化对于评估气候和人类活动在主导区域植被组成中的作用至关重要。^{在这里，我们展示了基于泥炭纤维素 δ 18}的亚热带东亚上全新世中晚期的润湿趋势O 和其他强大的水文气候记录的汇编。在如此潮湿的条件下，预计亚热带东亚地区将被更茂密的森林覆盖。然而，我们的泥炭花粉记录以及其他研究表明，自全新世晚期在亚热带东亚延伸地区以来，植被组成并没有按照设想的那样变化，而是从常绿阔叶林转变为更开阔的景观。我们将这种剧烈的植被转变归因于同时期增强的人类活动，泥炭木炭浓度的急剧增加和区域考古遗址的数量进一步证实了这一点。因此，需要适当的政策来保护区域生态和可持续性。