Regional climate-driven C3 and C4 plant variation in the Cheollipo area, Korea, during the late Pleistocene

Marine isotope stage 3 (MIS3), spanning from 25 to 60 ka BP, was a time of substantial environmental change that included changes in the global ice volume and atmospheric composition, with resultant regional climate changes. To understand past vegetation responses to such environmental changes in Korea, we estimated the abundance of C3 and C4 plants using the C/N and carbon isotope ratios of sedimentary organic matter. The MIS3 sedimentary unit at the Cheollipo site, located in a western coastal area of Korea, is characterized by a dark to light gray colored sedimentary unit (3.05 to 5.05 m in elevation, MIS3), which is between an underlain oxidized yellowish sedimentary unit (< 3.05 m in elevation) and an overlain oxidized yellowish sedimentary unit (> 5.05 m in elevation). The estimated abundance of C4 plants varied between 60 and 10% during the MIS3. The suborbital-scale variation in the estimated percentage of C4 plants was similar to those reported in continental ice volume and the East Asian monsoon intensity, suggesting that C4 plants prevailed under colder and drier conditions (intensified winter monsoon), whereas C3 plants have favored a warmer and wetter climate (intensified summer monsoon). Compared with high latitude regions (e.g., Chinese Loess Plateau and Lake Baikal) where low summer temperature suppressed aridity and pCO2 influences during the last glacial period, vegetation change in Cheollipo area may have more sensitively responded to aridity change which had been affected by the summer/winter monsoon intensity. The climate change in the western coastal area (Yellow Sea side) of Korea during the late Pleistocene may have been controlled by regional climate change coupled with continental ice volume change.