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Palaeo-notch sediments as reliable proxy records for climate change and anthropogenic activities: a short review

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Abstract

Over the past decades, many proxy materials (for example, lacustrine sediments, marine sediments, ice cores, loess, and tree rings) have been used to reconstruct palaeoclimatic and palaeoenvironmental changes. A new proxy material, palaeo-notch sediment, was reported in 2006, and since then many studies have been published for palaeoclimatic and palaeoenvironmental reconstruction using palaeo-notch sediments. In this paper, we introduced the palaeo-notch sediments in detail, and reviewed the state of knowledge on the Holocene climate changes, ecological responses to climate change and environmental impacts of anthropogenic activities based on the published research using palaeo-notch sediments. We also summarised five advantages of using palaeo-notch sediments for palaeoenvironmental studies. The palaeo-notch sediments may be available in the coastal regions from the Arctic, Antarctic and many other parts of the world. Therefore, sediments in palaeo-notches could provide valuable information for the study of palaeoclimate and palaeoenvironment in coastal regions.

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Acknowledgements

The research was supported by Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC) (42006054) and Chinese Polar Environment Comprehensive Investigation & Assessment Programmes (CHINARE2017-02-01, CHINARE2017-04-04). Samples Information and Data were issued by the Resource-sharing Platform of Polar Samples (http://birds.chinare.org.cn) maintained by Polar Research Institute of China (PRIC) and Chinese National Arctic & Antarctic Data Center (CN-NADC). We thank the Chinese Arctic and Antarctic Administration and PRIC for logistical support in field. We also thank the Governor of Svalbard for permission to carry out fieldwork.

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  1. Key Laboratory of Agricultural Environment in Universities of Shandong, College of Resources and Environment, Shandong Agricultural University, Tai’an, 271000, China

    Zhongkang Yang & Jun Wang

  2. Institute of Polar Environment and Anhui Key Laboratory of Polar Environment and Global Change, Department of Environmental Science and Engineering, University of Science and Technology of China, Hefei, 230026, China

    Zhongkang Yang, Zhouqing Xie & Liguang Sun

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  1. Zhongkang Yang
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Yang, Z., Xie, Z., Wang, J. et al. Palaeo-notch sediments as reliable proxy records for climate change and anthropogenic activities: a short review. Environ Earth Sci 80, 648 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12665-021-09946-3

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