Advances in Earth Science ›› 2017, Vol. 32 ›› Issue (11): 1147-1156. doi: 10.11867/j.issn.1001-8166.2017.11.1147

Special Issue:

• Orginal Article • Previous Articles     Next Articles

Was There Savanna Corridor on the Exposed Sunda Shelf During the Last Glacial Period?

Lu Dai 1( ), Swee Yeok Foong 2   

  1. 1.Ningbo University Department of Geography & Spacial Information Techniques,Zhejiang Ningbo 315211,China
    2.School of Biological Sciences, Universiti Sains Malaysia, Penang 11960, Malaysia
  • Received:2017-09-06 Revised:2017-10-27 Online:2017-11-10 Published:2018-01-10
  • About author:

    First author:Dai Lu(1981-), male, Ningbo City, Zhejiang Province, Associate professor. Research areas include palynology and marine geology.E-mail:dailu2288@163.com

  • Supported by:
    Project supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China “Research of paleoclimatic evolution in the southern South China Sea since the last glacial period, based on the marine palynological and phytolith evidences”(No.41776063)

Lu Dai, Swee Yeok Foong. Was There Savanna Corridor on the Exposed Sunda Shelf During the Last Glacial Period?[J]. Advances in Earth Science, 2017, 32(11): 1147-1156.

To date, it is still heatedly debated that whether the exposed Sunda Shelf was covered by savanna or rainforest in the Last Glacial Period (LGP). A lot of palynological evidences revealed that large increase of non-arboreal pollen did not occurred on the southern South China Sea (SCS), and lowland and montane rainforest pollen were still predominant. Most of the herb-predominated pollen records occurred on the northern Australia, possibly indicating dispersions of herbs from current distribution centers. As a result, we advocated that inland and connected exposed Sunda Shelf around the southern SCS were covered by tropical forests rather than savanna during the LGP, although climate was drier then. This conclusion is not only supported by palaeoclimate-vegetation modeling, but also corresponds with most of the palynological evidences from South America. Current palynological records also showed the lack of palaeoenviromental reconstruction in Southeast Asia, including less pollen records and ambiguous correlations between marine pollen assemblage and its catchment vegetation.

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