Zonal vegetation change in the Chinese Loess Plateau since MIS 3

Three pollen records from different regions of the Chinese Loess Plateau (CLP) show that the zonal differentiation of vegetation was not large in late MIS 3 time, all the areas were covered by warm semi-humid grass-shrub land, with some conifer-broad leaf mixed forest in the valleys. It appears that the zonal differentiation of vegetation nearly disappeared in the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM), while the semi-arid steppe expanded to the southern margin of the CLP. During the Holocene Thermal Maximum (HTM), the zonal differentiation became complex, with warm humid forest in the southeastern part and semi-arid steppe in the northern CLP. The zonal degree of vegetation differentiation of the CLP decreased again during the late Holocene as a result of climate change and increasing human influence on the landscape. In recent centuries, the transformation of the grass communities caused by land clearance for agriculture on the loess tablelands has been significant.