Postglacial climate variability at the northern limit of the East Asian monsoon and its impact on environments and humans in the Hokkaido region, northern Japan

• Applicant: Dr. Christian Leipe
• Subject Area: Palaeontology ; Physical Geography
• Term: from 2015 to 2018
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 274137614

High-resolution vegetation and climate archives from the Hokkaido region (North Japan) are of critical importance (i) for a better understanding of modern environmental changes because late Quaternary climate warming and sea level rise had a dramatic impact on this island region; (ii) for understanding the role of environmental factors on land use strategies and human populations in coastal regions and (iii) for validating prognostic potential of regional climate models. Previous palaeoenvironmental studies suggest different patterns of post-glacial climate and vegetation development in North Japan and other regions of Monsoon Asia. In order to investigate these regional differences and their background mechanisms, the current research project has been designed, which uses two continuous sedimentary archives from the northern (Rebun Island) and southern (Kameda Peninsula) part of Hokkaido covering the last ca. 17,000 and 14,000 years, respectively. The main objectives of the project include: (i) generating high-resolution fossil pollen records for (ii) detailed reconstruction of the spatio-temporal patterns of the regional vegetation and climate development in northern Japan in order to use the results for (iii) correlation with the post-glacial climate evolution in other parts of the East Asian monsoon domain, (vi) reconstructing the living environments and human-environmental interactions over time and (v) providing quantitative information for testing results of numerical climate and vegetation models. The palynological investigations will be supplemented by various sedimentological (e.g. microfacies, geochemical) and biological (e.g. diatom) analyses helpful for identification of short-term changes in environmental conditions (e.g. volcanic eruptions, tsunami). Extensive radiocarbon dating and microfacies analysis will provide a precise chronological control for the analysed sedimentary archives. To allow for direct correlation with the archaeological sequences from Hokkaido, the ages of the main cultural layers will be determined based on radiocarbon dating of reservoir-free terrestrial plant macrofossils (fruits and seeds). The archaeological data required within the scope of this project will be derived from the archaeological database run by the Japanese government and from ongoing archaeological research projects of the German and international cooperation partners.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants