干旱区生态环境知识资源中心

The upmost segment (Holocene series) of the Milanggouwan stratigraphic section (MGS1) in the Salawusu River valley shows 11 sedimentary cycles of dune sands and fluvio-lacustrine facies, or dune sands and paleosols. The analysis of the magnetic susceptibility of this segment suggests that there are 11 magnetic susceptibility cycles with the value alternating from low to high, in which the layers of the dune sands correspond to the lower value of the magnetic susceptibility and the layers of fluvio-lacustrine facies and paleosols correspond to the higher peaks. The study reveals that the low and high magnetic susceptibility values indicate the climate dominated by cold-arid winter monsoon and warm-humid summer monsoon of East Asia, respectively, and the study area has experienced at least 22 times of millennial-centennial scales climate alternation from the cold-arid to the warm-humid during the Holocene. In terms of the time and the climate nature, the variations basically correspond to those of the North Atlantic and some records of cold-warm changes in China as well. They might be caused by the alternation of winter and summer monsoons in the Mu Us Desert induced by global climate fluctuations in the Holocene.