Coastal environment of the past millennium recorded by a coastal dune in Fujian, China

Coastal dune is a common aeolian geomorphology in a sandy coast, which records the evolution process of the aeolian landscape system and reflects the complex interaction among land surface, atmosphere and ocean. Coast is a sensitive area to global climate change. Restricted by chronology, most previous researches in China focused only on the cause of formation of coastal dunes. In recent years, the development of optically stimulated luminescence (OSL) dating provides a good method and acts as a carrier for coastal dunes to paleoclimate and paleoenvironmental studies. In this study, we selected an aeolian dune at the Anshan archaeological site, Fujian, China as the research object based on field observations. For determining their sedimentary stages and the primary influencing factors, we used the OSL dating method to construct a chronological framework for the aeolian dune. In addition, the sizes of grains were analyzed for identifying factors influencing the winter monsoon during the Medieval Warm Period (MWP) and the Little Ice Age (LIA) in this area. The results showed that the deposition of the aeolian dune was closely related to variations in the winter monsoon intensity. The changes of the winter monsoon were similar to the tendency of the East Asian winter monsoon, although there were several sub-fluctuations. From an overall perspective, the winter monsoon was strengthened during the MWP (1050–1300). The results of a power spectrum analysis showed that the intensity of the East Asian winter monsoon is correlated with sunspot activity.

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