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Pollen concentration has been commonly used to indicate vegetation cover and moisture change. However, this practice may not always be justified in arid and semi-arid regions. This paper investigates potential problems with the approach based on modern pollen assemblages and fossil pollen data from and and semi-arid China. The results show that pollen concentration has no direct relationship with vegetation cover and effective moisture in our Study region. Pollen representation and sediment accumulation rate may have contributed to the complication. We conclude that pollen concentration cannot be used as a reliable index of effective moisture in arid and semi-arid regions. (C) 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.