The history of vegetation and climate changes of Yunnan in response to the uplift of Tibetan Plateau during the Neogene

摘要

As we all know, during the Neogene the uplift of the Tibetan Plateau caused profound changes in the regional landforms and climate, and influenced the development of the Asian monsoons. The Neogene global cooling is a crucial event of geology history when the aridity in the Asian interior enhanced and the Asian monsoons intensified. In order to understand the Neogene vegetation succession and climate changes of Yunnan, previous investigations have explored the vegetation and climate based on palaeobotanical data. Based on the plant fossil assemblages' fluctuations from 11 localities, we attempt to quantitatively reconstruct the palaeoenvironmental evolutions of Yunnan, and to explore the terrestrial environmental changes in response to development of the Asian monsoons. By using the palaeobotanical evidence, this research will provide a new attempt at exploring the palaeoclimate changes of Yunnan, revealing regional differences of Neogene climatic changes between Central Europe and Yunnan, and detecting the signals of the Asian monsoons on the southeastern edge of Tibetan Plateau during the Neogene.