Three-and-a-half million years of Tibetan Plateau vegetation dynamics in response to climate change
The Tibetan Plateau supports the largest alpine meadow ecosystem globally. It is considered extremely vulnerable to global warming. Knowledge of past vegetation dynamics under similarly warm climates could shed insights into where the tipping point for regime shifts may lie. We report a continuous multicentennial-resolved pollen record for the last 3.5 Myr from a lake sediment core retrieved from the Zoige Basin (~3,350-3,450 m above sea level) on the eastern Tibetan Plateau. It reveals a detailed picture of the vegetation dynamics across several timescales using the approaches of biomization, numerical analysis, statistical modelling and vegetation simulations. These lines of evidence show that vegetation underwent transformation from stable forest in the mid-late Pliocene Period (3.5-2.73 million years ago (Ma)) to codominance of forest and steppe in the early Quaternary Period (2.73-1.54 Ma) and to a meadow-dominated ecosystem after ~1.54 Ma, along with glacial-interglacial and millennial-scale grassland-forest shifts. These vegetational changes were largely controlled by temperature change. A global warming of ~2-3 °C is the most important threshold for the forest expansion and meadow resilience loss on the Tibetan Plateau. By analogy to the past, we suggest that, without major reductions in greenhouse gas emissions, the current Tibetan Plateau meadow is at risk of major transformation.
Authors
- Shilong Piao (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8057-2292)
- Haitao Xu (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9242-262X)
- Wenwei Zhao (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0145-6352)
- Hua‐Ning Qiu (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4971-3664)
- Qiaoyu Cui (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9824-3315)
- Liang Chen (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5706-6559)
- Yifan Cui (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0009-0000-0609-9150)
- Maotang Cai
- Chunzhu Chen (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4745-2544)
- Weihe Ren
- Feng Qin (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7111-7335)
- Hanfei Yang (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2458-4544)
- Jiawu Zhang
- H. J. B. Birks (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5891-9859)
- Zhengtang Guo (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2259-9715)
- Yanfen Kong (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1372-8813)
- Zhiyong Zhang (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5804-8160)
- Yaoliang Liu
- Quan Li (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7536-5475)
- Yan Zhao (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1693-9795)
- Junyi Ge (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4569-2915)
- Chenglong Deng (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1848-3170)
- Huan Li (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9771-9657)
- Haicheng Wei (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5477-283X)
Institutions
- Hengyang Normal University (CN)
- Chinese Academy of Sciences (CN)
- Nantong University (CN)
- Bjerknes Centre for Climate Research (NO)
- Chinese Academy of Geological Sciences (CN)
- Guangzhou University (CN)
- Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology (CN)
- Ministry of Education (RO)
- Lushan Botanical Garden (CN)
- Institute of Geology and Geophysics (CN)
- Institute of Geographic Sciences and Natural Resources Research (CN)
- University of Chinese Academy of Sciences (CN)
- University of Bergen (NO)
- University College London (GB)
- Hebei Normal University of Science and Technology (CN)
- Lanzhou University (CN)
- Hebei GEO University (CN)
Publication Details
- Journal
- Nature Ecology & Evolution
- Published
- 2025-06-13
- DOI
- https://doi.org/10.1038/s41559-025-02743-2
- Citations
- 15
- Primary Topic
- Geology and Paleoclimatology Research
- Type
- article
- Field-Weighted Citation Impact
- 19.51
Funders
- National Natural Science Foundation of China