Abstract
The growth of the Tibetan Plateau throughout the past 66 million years has profoundly affected the Asian climate, but how this unparalleled orogenesis might have driven vegetation and plant diversity changes in eastern Asia is poorly understood. We approach this question by integrating modeling results and fossil data. We show that growth of north and northeastern Tibet affects vegetation and, crucially, plant diversity in eastern Asia by altering the monsoon system. This northern Tibetan orographic change induces a precipitation increase, especially in the dry (winter) season, resulting in a transition from deciduous broadleaf vegetation to evergreen broadleaf vegetation and plant diversity increases across southeastern Asia. Further quantifying the complexity of Tibetan orographic change is critical for understanding the finer details of Asian vegetation and plant diversity evolution.
Original language | English |
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Article number | eabc7741 |
Number of pages | 13 |
Journal | Science Advances |
Volume | 7 |
Issue number | 5 |
DOIs | |
Publication status | Published - 27 Jan 2021 |
Bibliographical note
Funding Information:This work was supported by the NSFC-RCUK NERC joint project (no. 41661134049), the grant of Natural Environment Research Council (no. NE/P013805/1), National Natural Science Foundation of China (no. 41772026 to S.L. and no. 31470325 to T.S.), the Strategic Priority Research Program of CAS (no. XDA20070301 to Z.Z.), Yunnan Province Natural Science Foundation (2019FB061), XTBG International Fellowship for Visiting Scientists to R.A.S., Key Research Program of Frontier Sciences, CAS (no. QYZDB-SSW-SMC016 to T.S.), Youth Innovation Promotion Association, CAS (no. 2017439 to T.S.), and the CAS 135 program (no. 2017XTBG-F01 to T.S.)
Publisher Copyright:
Copyright © 2021 The Authors, some rights reserved.
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