ORIGINAL PAPER Recent ecological responses to climate variability and human impacts in the Nianbaoyeze Mountains (eastern Tibetan Plateau) inferred from pollen, diatom and tree-ring data Juliane Wischnewski • Ulrike Herzschuh • Kathleen M. Ru ¨ hland • Achim Bra ¨uning • Steffen Mischke • John P. Smol • Lily Wang Received: 24 May 2013 / Accepted: 7 September 2013 Ó Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht 2013 Abstract The Tibetan Plateau is a region that is highly sensitive to recent global warming, but the complexity and heterogeneity of its mountainous landscape can result in variable responses. In addition, the scarcity and brevity of regional instrumental and palaeoecological records still hamper our understand- ing of past and present patterns of environmental change. To investigate how the remote, high-alpine environments of the Nianbaoyeze Mountains, eastern Tibetan Plateau, are affected by climate change and human activity over the last *600 years, we compared regional tree-ring studies with pollen and diatom remains archived in the dated sediments of Don- gerwuka Lake (33.22°N, 101.12°E, 4,307 m a.s.l.). In agreement with previous studies from the eastern Tibetan Plateau, a strong coherence between our two juniper-based tree-ring chronologies from the Nian- baoyeze and the Anemaqin Mountains was observed, with pronounced cyclical variations in summer tem- perature reconstructions. A positive directional trend to warmer summer temperatures in the most recent decades, was, however, not observed in the tree-ring record. Likewise, our pollen and diatom spectra showed minimal change over the investigated time period. Although modest, the most notable change in the diatom relative abundances was a subtle decrease in the dominant planktonic Cyclotella ocellata and a concurrent increase in small, benthic fragilarioid taxa in the *1820s, suggesting higher ecosystem variabil- ity. The pollen record subtly indicates three periods of increased cattle grazing activity (*1400–1480 AD, *1630–1760 AD, after 1850 AD), but shows Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (doi:10.1007/s10933-013-9747-1) contains supple- mentary material, which is available to authorized users. J. Wischnewski (&) Á U. Herzschuh Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research, Telegrafenberg A 43, 14473 Potsdam, Germany e-mail: juliane.wischnewski@googlemail.com; juliane.wischnewski@gmail.com U. Herzschuh Á S. Mischke Institute of Earth and Environmental Sciences, University of Potsdam, Karl-Liebknecht-Str. 24, 14476 Potsdam- Golm, Germany K. M. Ru ¨hland Á J. P. Smol Paleoecological Environmental Assessment and Research Laboratory, Department of Biology, Queen’s University, Kingston, ON K7L 3N6, Canada A. Bra ¨uning Institute of Geography, Friedrich Alexander University Erlangen-Nu ¨rnberg, Kochstr. 4/4, 91054 Erlangen, Germany L. Wang Institute of Geographical Sciences and Natural Resources Research, CAS, Beijing, China L. Wang Institute of Tibetan Plateau Research, CAS, Beijing, China 123 J Paleolimnol DOI 10.1007/s10933-013-9747-1