A REVIEW OF PALEOCLIMATIC CHANGES IN CHINA BASED ON PEAT CELLULOSE ISOTOPIC RECORDS

Peat, as an important geological archive, has some internal advantages over other geological archives in researching paleoclimatic changes (especially the paleoclimatic changes during Holocene), and is particularly suitable for organic geochemistry and isotopic geochemistry studies. There are many peat bogs in China. Various researches have been conducted on these peat archives by both the domestic and international scientists,and important progresses have been reached. In this paper, we made a comprehensive review of the reported stable isotopic results for peat cellulose in China. The available data has been carefully collected and analyzed, upon the comparison with the latest results of paleoclimatic reconstruction obtained from other geological archives, then discussed are the critical problems about the application of peat cellulose isotopes in paleoclimatic research. We believe that these problems come from the insufficient study of modern-process. Therefore, the paleoclimatic significance of the stable isotopes of peat cellulose from a specific locality is not certain, due to lack of modern analogues. Finally, a discussion was devoted to the future development of stable isotopes of peat cellulose in China and some methodological problems.