Abstract Environmental change in Lake Taihu and its catchment since the early to middle part of the twentieth century has left a clear geochemical record in the lake sediments. The human activi- ties in the lake and its catchment responsible for the change include agriculture, fishery, urbanisa- tion, sewage and industrial waster disposal. Sedi- ment cores were collected from Meilian Bay of northern Lake Taihu to investigate the record of anthropogenic impacts on the lake’s ecosystem and to assess its natural, pre-eutrophication baseline state. Two marked stratigraphic sedi- ment units were identified on the basis of total phosphorus concentration (TP), pigments, total organic carbon (TOC)/total nitrogen (TN), d 13 C and d 15 N corresponding to stages in the lake history dominated by phytoplankton, and by aquatic macrophytes. Results show that as TP loading increased from the early 1950s the lake produced sediments with increasing amounts of organic matter derived from phytoplankton. In the early 1950s, the first evidence for eutrophi- cation at the Meilian Bay site is recorded by an increase in C/N values and in sediment accumu- lation rate, but there is little change in phospho- rus concentrations, pigments, d 13 C and d 15 N at this time. After 1990 a more rapid increase in trophic status took place indicated by increased levels of phosphorus, pigments, d 15 N and by de- creased d 13 C and TOC/TN values in the lake sediments. The first increase in trophic status of the early 1950s results mainly from agricultural development in the catchment. In contrast, the acceleration from ca. 1990 originates from the recent development of fisheries and the urbani- sation and industrialisation of the catchment. Keywords Eutrophication Æ Human impact Æ Lake sediment Æ Stable isotopes Æ Lake Taihu Æ China W. Jinglu (&) Æ Z. Haiao Nanjing Institute of Geography and Limnology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, 73 East Beijing Road, Nanjing 210008, P.R. China e-mail: w.jinglu@niglas.ac.cn W. Jinglu Institute of Tibetan Plateau Research, CAS, Beijing 100029, P.R. China H. Chengmin Environmental Science & Engineering, Sichuan University, Sichuan 10065, P.R. China G. H. Schleser Forschungszentrum Juelich, ICG- V, Juelich D-52425, Germany R. Battarbee Environmental Change Research Centre, University College London, Gower St., London WC1E 6BT, UK J Paleolimnol (2007) 38:13–23 DOI 10.1007/s10933-006-9058-x 123 ORIGINAL PAPER Sedimentary evidence for recent eutrophication in the northern basin of Lake Taihu, China: human impacts on a large shallow lake Wu Jinglu Æ Huang Chengmin Æ Zeng Haiao Æ Gerhard H. Schleser Æ Rick Battarbee Received: 15 May 2006 / Accepted: 14 July 2006 / Published online: 7 February 2007 Ó Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2007