Holocene climatic controls on flooding regime along the Ussuri River in Northeast Asia

Abstract

Knowledge of the long-term flooding response to climatic changes is critical for probing the flooding future in an oncoming warmer world. In this paper, three well-dated wetland sedimentary cores with high-resolution grain-size records were employed to reconstruct the historical flooding regime along the Ussuri River during the past 7000 years. The results show that five flooding-prone intervals marked by increased mean rates of sand-fraction accumulation occurred at 6.4–5.9 ka BP, 5.5–5.1 ka BP, 4.6–3.1 ka BP, 2.3–1.8 ka BP, and 0.5–0 ka BP, respectively. These intervals are generally consistent with the higher mean annual precipitation controlled by the strengthened East Asian summer monsoon which has been widely documented in geological records across the monsoonal regions of East Asia. Considering the prevalent monsoonal climate along the modern Ussuri River, we suggest that the regional flooding evolution during the Holocene Epoch should be generally controlled by the East Asian summer monsoon circulation which was initially linked to the ENSO activities in the tropical Pacific Ocean. While for the last interval spanning 0.5–0 ka BP, human influence, compared with the long-serving climatic controls, has played a more critical role in driving the regional flooding regime.