Contents Briefing

This book does a systematic research on and a detailed analysis of the ancient climate and the ancient environment. It reveals the evolution rules and development tendency of arid and semiarid regions in China. It gives a great impetus to the development of rescource and environment sciences in China and upgrade our country's scientific level of this academic area.

Author Profile

Liu Dongsheng, seior Acadician of Chinese Academy of Science, is an internationally prestigious scientist in Earth and environment sciences. During his academic career of the past 65 years, Liu made tremendous contributions in vertebrate paleontology, Quaternary geology, environmental geology, scientific expeditions of Tibetan Plateau and Earth's polar regions, and particularly in loess study. His innovated theory on loess convincingly demonstrates the wind-blown origin and has settled a long-term controversy of over 170 years. His paleoclimatic study of the loess sequences confirms the Quaternary glacial cycles many more than the conventionsal belief, the key terrestial evidencwe for the revolutionary advance in the theory of the ice ages, and established the Chinese loess sequence as one of the three standard records for global change. His comprehensive study on the uplift of Tibetan Plateau and its influence in enviromental change initiated the Earth systems study, a remarkable concept in modern Earth science.

Academician Liu won the Tyler prize for environmental achievement in 2002, the highest honor State Preeminent Science and Technology Award of China in 2003 and EGU Alexander von Humblodt Medallist in 2007.