摘要：Environmental reconstructions
of tropical deserts during the Holocene
have mainly focused on
Northern Africa. There, numerous
lake-level and pollen data have
been extensively used for regional
reconstruction of past hydrological
or vegetation changes, as well as
for paleoclimatic models connecting
environmental changes with
variations in the Earth’s orbit or investigating
atmosphere-vegetation
feedback in the climate system. By
contrast, very little is known about
the environmental and climate history
of Arabia, even though recent
discoveries of speleothems in Oman
(Fleitmann et al., 2003) have yielded
high-resolution oxygen isotope
records refl ecting variations in the
Indian monsoon rainfall during the
Holocene. However, the northern
penetration of the Indian monsoon
inland and its impact on hydrology
and vegetation are only poorly understood
because of the scarcity of
continuous continental sedimentary
archives. Here, we present the fi rst
continuous record of environment
and climate in Southern Arabia,
based on sedimentological, mineralogical,
pollen and isotope studies
of al-Hawa (Yemen) paleolake,
which covers the time interval from
12 to 7.5 ka BP.
