The Relationship Between Dry–Wet Change and the Manchu Rise in China

Exploring the impact of dry–wet change on the Manchu rise has important implications for revealing the impact of climate change on ethnic dynamics. In this study, we used tree rings of Carya cathayensis and historical data to study this dynamic in Northeast Asia using function fitting and step-by-step elimination analysis. The results show a mean reconstructed scPDSI4–10 of 0.822 from 1583 to 1644, which is 0.287 higher than the mean from 1548 to 2022 (0.535), and during 25 slightly wet years. This indicates that dry–wet change provided a favorable natural environment for the Manchu rise, under which the group’s area continued to expand and change shape in complex ways, and the population increased rapidly in the control region. However, in some years, the closer the scPDSI4–10 was to the multi-year mean (0.774) of the deviation from the mean (0.535) of the scPDSI4–10, the faster the control region expanded and the more the population increased. These results provide a reference for understanding the relationship between ethnic groups’ dynamics and climate change.