The evolution of deserts and human societies is fundamentally interlinked. Monsoon marginal desert greening histories are particularly important in human development, yet interpreting environmental variability from desert sediments remains challenging. Here, we address this through a high-resolution chronological study of monsoon marginal desert strata. We show that Mu Us Desert deposits consist solely of warm-phase sediments and preserve clear orbital cycles of monsoon-driven greening and dune stabilization. This provides geomorphological evidence that monsoon variations and desert evolution were jointly controlled by both high- and low-latitude processes. We further show that two major events in human history in East Asia are tied closely to the changing Mu Us: 1) The onset of widespread pastoralism in northern China at ~4.5 ka leads to desert landscape stabilization, contrasting with human-induced erosion further south; 2) The rise and fall of Shimao City, the largest Neolithic city in East Asia, is directly linked to desert hydroclimate. Luminescence dating and sedimentary analysis of desert deposits from northern China indicate intervals of monsoon-driven greening and dune stabilization that are also linked to widespread pastoralism during the Holocene.

Dust fluxes from inland Asian deserts link continental erosion to marine productivity and global carbon–nitrogen budgets, thereby contributing to climate feedbacks. Nevertheless, long-term sediment sources for Asian deserts and their controlling mechanisms remain poorly constrained, hindering a comprehensive understanding of desert evolution and its driving forces. Here, using geochemical fingerprints of surface dune sands and sediments from two cores, combined with five machine-learning source-apportionment methods, we investigate spatiotemporal variations in sediment provenance of the Tengger Basin. Our results show that, both over the past ∼3.0 Ma and at present, sediment supply to the Tengger Basin has been dominated by the Northeastern Tibetan Plateau (NETP) and the Alxa Block (AB), with only minor contributions from the Central Asian Orogenic Belt (CAOB). Modern coarse dune sands in the western desert are predominantly sourced from the NETP, whereas those in the eastern and northern parts are mainly derived from the AB. Provenance records from the drill cores reveal three principal transitions at ∼2.6 Ma, ∼1.6 Ma, and ∼ 0.9 Ma. Specifically, the relative decrease in NETP contribution around ∼2.6 Ma is attributed primarily to a strengthened East Asian Winter Monsoon (EAWM), synchronous with the onset of Northern Hemisphere Glaciation, which enhanced the transport of finer AB-derived detritus into the basin. The increase in NETP contribution at ∼1.6 Ma was likely driven by uplift of the Qilian Mountains, which intensified fluvial activity and increased the delivery of NETP-derived sediments. Since ∼0.9 Ma, complex glacial–fluvial–aeolian interactions drove substantial increases in detritus from both NETP and AB sources, with AB rising most dramatically, while CAOB input also became meaningful, collectively reducing the relative contribution of NETP detritus. Beyond providing new empirical constraints on sediment cycling in the Tengger Desert, this study demonstrates the value of integrating high-dimensional geochemical datasets with machine-learning approaches to target complex provenance histories.

Quantifying the contributions of multiple sources to aeolian sediments is essential for reconstructing paleo-wind fields, evaluating dust impacts on climate and ecosystems, and guiding targeted desertification mitigation. Here, we present a machine-learning framework that integrates high-dimensional geochemical fingerprints, compositional preprocessing, recursive feature elimination with cross-validation, and tree-based regression to quantify the contributions of multiple sources to aeolian sediments. We applied this framework to the provenance of surface dune sands in the Gurbantunggut Desert. Following compositional preprocessing and feature selection, we trained three tree-based regressors—Random Forest, LightGBM, and XGBoost— on 10,000 synthetic mixtures generated from a symmetric Dirichlet distribution; all models attained good predictive performance on the test subset of the synthetic data. All models identify the Altai Mountains as the primary source, with secondary contributions from the Junggar Mountains and minor contributions from the Tianshan Mountains. These machine-learning estimates broadly agree with previous work and independent Bayesian and Frequentist unmixing results, suggesting that our machine-learning framework, combined with geochemical fingerprints, provides a robust tool for quantitative provenance analysis of aeolian systems.

Understanding the Holocene hydroclimatic evolution in Central Asia is important for understanding the history of human cultural exchange across Eurasia; however, it is uncertain whether moisture changes occurred synchronously in the mountains and adjacent basins. Here, we present a high-resolution magnetic parameter-based paleoenvironmental record from the southern Junggar Basin of China to elucidate basin-to-mountain moisture variations and dynamics since the Last Glacial Maximum. Our record reveals two humid phases: a Late Pleistocene-Early Holocene interval (similar to 14-10.5 ka) and a Middle-Late Holocene interval (similar to 5-0.5 ka), with the later phase wetter than the earlier phase. This pattern is synchronous with independent evidence from the loess-paleosol records in the similar to 1500-m-high Tianshan Mountains. This indicates that Holocene hydroclimate variations were consistent across elevation profiles. Combined with archaeological evidence, we propose that the humid conditions since similar to 5 ka fostered agropastoral expansion and intensified trans-Eurasian cultural exchange.

Understanding the formation and evolution of sandy deserts in China is critical for unraveling the mechanisms of hyperaridity in mid-latitude Asia and their broader impacts. This review synthesizes recent progress in paleoenvironmental reconstructions across China's major sandy deserts. In situ sedimentary archives from desert centers reveal a three-stage evolutionary pattern involving desert initiation, expansion, and final stabilization. Current evidence indicates that the Taklimakan Desert initiated no later than ∼3.4 Ma, much earlier than the Badain Jaran (∼1.1 Ma) and Tengger (∼0.9 Ma) deserts. This temporal-spatial heterogeneity reflects the interplay among factors including hyperaridity, sediment supply, wind-regime dynamics, and regional geomorphic control. Following their formation, these deserts underwent substantial landscape and hydroclimate changes on orbital timescales, alternating between fluvial–lacustrine dominance during humid phases and aeolian activity during dry phases. Despite broadly similar wet–dry fluctuations, the forcing mechanisms differ: western deserts respond mainly to mid-latitude westerly variability, whereas eastern deserts are more influenced by the Asian monsoon. Future work should establish robust chronologies for drilling cores from desert interiors and integrate these in situ records with dust archives from downwind regions. This source-to-sink approach is essential for clarifying the timing, mechanisms, and ecological impacts of sandy desert evolution in continental interiors.

In hyper-arid regions, groundwater serves as a critical nexus linking various components of the Earth system. However, due to the extensive sand mantle, the history and controlling factors of groundwater in these regions, as well as their relationship with global climate, remain poorly understood. To shed light on these issues, this study focuses on the Alxa Plateau sandy desert (mainly involving Badain Jaran Desert and Tengger Desert) in northern China and analyzes the soluble salts from two drill cores in the desert interior, and from modern dunes, lake waters, springs and dry lakebeds. Combined with regional hydrological, stratigraphic, and paleoenvironmental evidences, the history of groundwater activity in the desert was systematically reconstructed. The results revealed that two significant decreases of soluble salts in the desert strata occurred at 1000 and 500 ka, respectively, indicating stepwise enhancement of regional groundwater activity. In desert regions, aeolian sand layers function as critical aquifers, of which formation, structure, and evolution fundamentally govern groundwater dynamics. In the Alxa Plateau sandy desert, these aeolian sand layers first appeared similar to 1000 ka and further thickened after 500 ka, markedly enhancing the spatial mobility and diffusion of groundwater across the desert. Similar stratigraphic conversions also existed in other deserts across northern China. Global glacial-interglacial rhythms, in response to the Mid-Pleistocene Transition and the Mid-Brunhes Event, continuously regulated the production, deposition and deflation of aeolian sands, and regional humidity in the sand sea, which further determined the evolution of the desert stratigraphic architecture, finally leading to enhanced groundwater activity, accumulation of soluble salt on the surface, and soluble-salt-bearing dust releasement. This finding has significant implications for the assessment and exploration of groundwater resources in hyper-arid regions.

Abstract Chronological studies of glacial sediments from the Shishapangma and Yarlung Tsangpo River valley indicate that Quaternary glaciation on the southern Tibetan Plateau commenced at ∼0.75–0.83 Ma. However, the oldest glacial deposits in the northern plateau are dated to only ∼0.46 Ma, markedly later than the Middle Pleistocene glacial intensification evidenced in southern plateau and loess archives. Here, we report an S‐ratio record—a proxy for ferrous iron content with potential links to glacial fluctuations—obtained from a drill core in the Tengger Desert on the northern piedmont of the Qilian Mountains. This record shows a pronounced rise at ∼0.9 Ma, coincident with enhanced Fe2+‐bearing minerals in Kunlun Mountains loess and the earliest moraine deposits in the southern plateau. Collectively, these observations imply that alpine glacial activity may have intensified synchronously across the entire plateau during the Mid‐Pleistocene Transition, likely in response to global cooling and Tibetan Plateau uplift.

The loess deposits of Northeast China provide a comprehensive record of upwind desert evolution, offering critical evidence for studying Asian inland aridification. This study focuses on the Niuyingzi (NYZ) section in Chifeng, Northeast China, where magnetostratigraphic dating confirms for the first time, its basal age of 1.32 Ma, representing the oldest known loess deposits in Northeast China. Using environmental magnetic parameters, we reconstructed the aridification history of Northeast China, which reveals the persistent intensification of aridity since 1.32 Ma, together with three major aridification events. The first event occurred at 1.17 Ma, likely driven by regional climate change. The second and third events occurred at similar to 0.92 Ma and similar to 0.65 Ma, respectively, and were synchronous across the extensive inland regions of Asia. Furthermore, since similar to 0.5 Ma, Northeast China experienced accelerated aridification, possibly linked to the development of large-scale sand-dune landforms in the upwind Otindag Sandy Land. Comparison with aridity proxy records from Africa and Australia demonstrates the synchronous intensification of aridity across Asia and Africa at similar to 0.9 Ma, driven primarily by Northern Hemisphere ice sheet expansion. This study fills a critical spatiotemporal gap in sedimentary records from the eastern flank of the Asian arid belt, providing mechanistic insights into aridification dynamics across inland Asia.

The Badain Jaran Desert hosts the world's tallest mega-dunes, but its long-term sand sources remain poorly constrained, limiting insights into its evolutionary mechanisms. Geochemical fingerprints of multiple grain-size fractions from a centrally located borehole yielded a similar to 1.2 Ma provenance record: early sediments derived mainly from the Central Asian Orogenic Belt (CAOB), whereas after similar to 0.7 Ma the northeastern Tibetan Plateau (NETP) became the dominant source. This transition, synchronous with provenance changes in the adjacent Tengger Desert, reflects expanded glaciation and intensified fluvial activity on the NETP. These environmental changes were driven by global cooling and Northern Hemisphere glaciation following the Mid-Pleistocene Transition, which together increased detritus production and transport. Concurrently, a strengthened East Asian Winter Monsoon enhanced delivery of glacial-fluvial sediments to the desert. These coupled glacial-fluvial-aeolian processes created favorable conditions for mega-dune growth and played a pivotal role in shaping the sand seas surrounding the NETP.

Understanding the relationship between sand sources and sinks in deserts can provide valuable insights into the dynamics governing the formation of desert dunes. Despite attempts to elucidate the material origins of the Gurbantunggut Desert, uncertainty persists, particularly regarding the quantitative source contributions across various particle size fractions. To address this issue, we conducted a comprehensive analysis of the geochemical composition (trace and rare earth elements) within the coarse (75-250 mu m) and fine (<75 mu m) fractions of 20 surface dune sand samples from the Gurbantunggut Desert. Employing multidimensional scaling (MDS) and sediment source fingerprinting (SSF), we identified the main sources for both coarse and fine fractions of the dune sands, and calculated the relative contributions from three potential sources associated with the Altai, Tianshan and Junggar Mts. Our results reveal spatial heterogeneity in the provenance of dune sands within the Gurbantunggut Desert. Sands from the central and eastern regions of the desert primarily originate from the Altai Mts., while those from the western part of the desert are primarily sourced from the Junggar Mts. This sourcesink relationship aligns with the prevailing wind patterns in the Junggar Basin-that is, the upwind Altai and Junggar Mts. function as significant sediment sources for the downwind desert areas. This highlights the crucial role of wind patterns in determining the sand sources in the Gurbantunggut Desert. Our findings suggest that desert formation depends not only on sufficient sand material, but also on the availability and mobility of sand, which is largely influenced by regional wind patterns.

Global cooling over the past 45 million years has been well established from deep sea isotopic records, and one explanation has been the cooling effect of uplift of the Tibetan Plateau. Other explanations for cooling are initiation of circum-Antarctic circulation, and carbon sequestration by newly evolved grasslands. The Lanzhou Basin is located at the intersection of the Tibetan Plateau, eastern monsoon region, and northwestern arid region of China, so well placed to evaluate Tibetan Plateau effects. This paper infers paleoclimatic changes from a long sequence of Cenozoic paleosols within the Xiliugou, Yehucheng and Xianshuihe Formations, in the Lanzhou Basin of Gansu. Eleven distinct kinds of paleosols (pedotypes) were recognized in the field from root traces, soil horizons and soil structures. These pedotypes were then intepreted as soils by R-mode factor analysis and molecular weathering ratios of major element geochemical composition. Supporting data from compactioncorrected depth to carbonate in the paleosols show that paleoclimate was persistently arid to semi-arid from the middle Eocene to the middle Miocene, but interrupted by transient climatic warm-wet events, which correlate with marine oxygen-isotopic events and large igneous province basaltic eruptions. At 42, 34, 22, 18, 17 and 16 Ma, spikes of mean annual temperature (MAT) and mean annual precipitation (MAP) are evident from the paleosols, at times also recognized in global marine isotopic and stomatal index carbon dioxide records. At 37, 33 and 23 Ma, low MAP and MAT estimated from paleosols of the Lanzhou Basin coincide with glacial advances, and marine oxygen isotopic spikes and low CO2. Paleosols of the Lanzhou Basin record global paleoclimate events during the middle Eocene to the middle Miocene, rather than variation in Tibetan Plateau uplift. The rain shadow from Tibetan Plateau maintained generally arid to subhumid eolian deposition in Gansu for the past 50 million years.

Aeolian activity on the Tibetan Plateau (TP) has profound effect on the Asian and global climate. In the southern TP, loess deposition widely occurred associated with the massive glaciers and large rivers, recording the interplay history among the aeolian activity, atmosphere, and cryosphere. However, the initiation age of the loess and the factor controlling the loess formation are still controversial. Here, three drilling cores were retrieved from Linzhi area, in the eastern Yarlung Zangbo River Basin of the southern TP, which reached the bedrock and documented the loess development in the southern TP. Based on the optically stimulated luminescence, electron spin resonance, paleomagnetism dating and relative paleointensity correlation, the basal age of the drilling core was constrained at 584 ka revealing the onset of significant aeolian activity on the southern TP. Synthesize this study and previous work on the loess age across the TP, three stages were identified, namely 3600, 2800-2700, and 1200-600 ka, with the age trending younger from north to south. Extensive loess development on the TP occurred between 1200 and 600 ka, which was mainly ascribed to the global cooling during the mid-Pleistocene Transition. During this time, the ampler glaciers extent significantly expanded, westerly displaced southward and the wind intensity also intensified on the TP, which resulted in the enhancement of dust generation, arid and windy condition, leading to the loess preservation and development on the TP. Moreover, numerous evidences suggested that the glaciers on the TP may significantly developed since 800 ka, then enlarged at 500-600 ka, which may lead to the massive dust/loess input to the TP, Chinese Loess Plateau and north Pacific Ocean.

Dust plays a critical role in global biogeochemical and carbon cycles. The deserts of northern China have been important East Asian dust sources throughout the Quaternary. The Tengger Desert, one such major arid dust-producing region in northern China, is thought to have started resembling its current form during the middle to late Pleistocene. As such, understanding the nature of the Tengger Desert’s formation and the associated import, storage, and export of sediments are consequential for the regional, and potentially global, climate. The U-Pb detrital zircon geochronology data reported here from both present-day and middle to late Pleistocene Tengger Desert sediments support derivation from the Shiyang River system sourced from the Qilian Mountains mixed with sediments eroded from local basement uplifts and Gobi Altay sources. This interpretation is different from the view that sediments of this age were primarily transported to the Tengger Desert from the arid East Asian continental interior upwind. We note that this analysis suggests a common provenance for Quaternary sediments in the Tengger, Badain Jaran, and Mu Us Deserts wherein these deserts received riverine-sourced sediments from the Qilian Mountains and northeastern Tibetan Plateau. This observation highlights the importance of precipitation at elevation along the present-day margin of the East Asian summer monsoon in driving sediment supply during the middle to late Quaternary desertification within the East Asian continental interior.

Understanding the nature of evolution history in desert regions is essential because the potential influence on millions of people and future climate change. Environmental magnetism is a crucial method for revealing the desert evolution processes, however, was poorly understood in the Tengger desert in northwest China. We conducted systematic rock and environmental magnetic investigations on a borehole in the hinterland of Tengger Desert, revealing that the dominant magnetic minerals of the borehole since ~3 Ma are magnetite and hematite. The S-ratio and L-ratio patterns show dominant 400-kyr orbital cycles and a phase variation at ~0.9 Ma. We suggest north Tibetan Plateau derived fluvial activities enhanced in response to eccentricity driven wet-to-dry transitions cause the provenance area variations in the Tengger Desert in the Quaternary. The phase variation of magnetic parameter at ~0.9 Ma is likely due to the provenance and sedimentary environment change, triggered by the uplift of the northeast Tibetan Plateau in mid-Pleistocene.

The East Asian Summer Monsoon (EASM) is critically important for determining the spatial variability of precipitation in the continental interior of East Asia. Hence, knowledge of past EASM variability may help predict the response of monsoon rainfall to ongoing global climate change, with important implications for the living environment of the large human population of East Asia. In this study, we obtained several geochemical records from the Hetao Basin in the upper reaches of the Yellow River (UYR), which we use to reconstruct variations in chemical weathering intensity since 1.68 Ma. Our results suggest that chemical weathering was significantly intensified during the interval of -0.47-0.18 Ma, evidenced by lower Rb/Sr and alpha AlSr values, and higher LEF Mg/Al values, within the lacustrine sediments during this period. This enhanced chemical weathering was closely linked to increased monsoon rainfall associated with a strong EASM. The long-term trends of EASM rainfall in the UYR were caused by variations in the atmospheric circulation over the Pacific Ocean, such as the ENSO cycle and the PDO phase transition, which may act as testable factors in the prediction of future EASM rainfall.

The age of the formation of the upper reaches of the Yellow River is controversial, ranging from the Pliocene to the Middle Pleistocene. However, determining the source of the detrital materials within the Yellow River sedimentary basins outside the Tibetan Plateau can provide important evidence for resolving this issue. We conducted geochemical and heavy mineral studies of the sediments from a 274.60-m-long drill core from the Hetao Basin, the largest sedimentary basin in the upper reaches of the Yellow River. Our results suggest that detritus from the northeastern margin of Tibetan Plateau dominated the sedimentation within the Hetao Basin since ~1.68 Ma, with an average contribution of 68%. This suggests that the Yellow River that connected the northeastern margin of the Tibetan Plateau and the Hetao Basin was formed by at least the Early Pleistocene. Detritus from the distal Gobi-Altay Mts. and from the proximal Ordos Plateau and the Yin Mts. had average contributions of 28% and 4%, respectively. We conclude that the variations in the relative contributions of these three sources were related not only to the tectonic uplift of the Tibetan Plateau that driving integration of the Yellow River drainage system but also to the evolution of the East Asian monsoon system, as well as to global climate change.

Loess in the Chinese Loess Plateau (CLP) preserves abundant information about the dust cycle over Asia. However, the variations of loess source and composition over time remain controversial. Soluble salt is an important dust component and is linked to the landforms and environments associated with dust mobilization, transport and deposition. Based on an investigation of the soluble salts of two loess sequences from the central and western CLP, we show that the soluble salts of Chinese loess mainly stepwise increased at -1 and - 0.5 Ma. Several lines of evidence indicated that the increased supply of soluble salts mainly originated from dust input, suggesting the enhanced salinity of Asian dust. The enhanced soluble-salt-bearing dust was driven by lakebed evolution in the potential source areas, as confirmed by abundant geomorphological and sedimentological evidence. The Mid-Pleistocene Transition (associated with Tibetan Plateau uplift) induced aridity of the potential source areas (PSA) and Mid-Brunhes Transition triggered intensifying East Asian summer monsoon are responsible for the stepwise lakebed evolution in the PSA at -1 and - 0.5 Ma, respectively, which in turn acted as an important soluble-salt-bearing dust reservoir. These findings provide new evidence for understanding the evolution of regional dust emissions and their possible environmental effects in the past and future.