PROGRESS OF QUATERNARY PALYNOLOGY RESEARCHES IN CHINESE SHELF AREAS

Sporopollen assemblage is a critical index for stratigraphic devision, climatic and geographic reconstruction of shelf deposits. Palynological research started in 1970s on Chinese continental shelves. Since then remarkable achievements have been obtained in the Quaternary palynological study on the Eastern China Sea shelves, including the Bohai Sea, Yellow Sea and East China Sea shelves, in particular in the period of 1980s. Research of deep water palynology has been rapidly developed since 1990s in the areas of South China Sea shelf. Study of source and transportation process of modern pollen is a prerequisite for accurate and rationale interpretation of fossil pollen. Therefore, pollen analysis of the samples from the air, surface seawater and bottom sediment in a wide region is required, which will help understand the pollen provenance and the environmental significances of typical sporopollen and algae assemblages. So far a lot of studies have been devoted to the pollen assemblage in the surface sediments and their distribution and transportation patterns in Chinese continental shelf areas, especially in the coastal and estuarine areas. The study of Quaternary palynology is relatively weak in the continental shelf areas, and most of them are aiming at low resolution pollen-spore analysis and qualitatively recover of the ecosystem and climate variations in the pollen source areas and evironmental changes on the continental shelves during late Pleistocene or Holocene periods. In order to deeply understand the paleoenvironmental process in the Chinese continental shelf region, more high resolution palynological study over a longer time scale needs to be conducted in future.