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Article analysis:

The article "Terrestrial and aquatic responses to climate change and human impact on the southeastern Tibetan Plateau during the past two centuries" by Wischnewski et al. (2011) presents a comprehensive study of the impacts of climate change and human activities on the southeastern Tibetan Plateau. The authors use a range of proxies, including pollen analysis, sedimentology, and geochemistry, to reconstruct environmental changes over the past two centuries.

Overall, the article is well-written and provides valuable insights into how climate change and human activities have affected this region. However, there are some potential biases and limitations that should be considered when interpreting the results.

One potential bias is that the study focuses primarily on the impacts of climate change and human activities on terrestrial ecosystems, with less attention paid to aquatic ecosystems. While the authors do discuss some of the impacts on lakes and rivers in the region, these are not given as much emphasis as terrestrial ecosystems. This may reflect a bias towards studying more visible or easily accessible ecosystems rather than those that are more difficult to access or study.

Another potential bias is that the study relies heavily on proxy data rather than direct observations. While proxy data can provide valuable insights into past environmental changes, they are subject to interpretation and can be influenced by a range of factors such as taphonomic processes or sampling biases. The authors acknowledge these limitations but it is important to keep them in mind when interpreting their results.

There are also some missing points of consideration in this article. For example, while the authors discuss how grazing has impacted vegetation cover in some areas, they do not consider other potential drivers of vegetation change such as fire or insect outbreaks. Additionally, while they discuss how climate change has affected precipitation patterns in this region, they do not consider how changes in temperature may also be affecting ecosystem dynamics.

Finally, there are some unsupported claims made in this article. For example, while the authors suggest that increased grazing pressure has led to decreased vegetation cover in some areas, they do not provide direct evidence for this claim beyond correlations between grazing intensity and vegetation cover. Similarly, while they suggest that increased sedimentation rates in lakes may be due to increased erosion caused by human activities such as logging or road construction, they do not provide direct evidence for this claim either.

In conclusion, while Wischnewski et al.'s (2011) article provides valuable insights into how climate change and human activities have impacted terrestrial ecosystems on the southeastern Tibetan Plateau over the past two centuries, there are some potential biases and limitations that should be considered when interpreting their results. These include a focus on terrestrial rather than aquatic ecosystems, reliance on proxy data rather than direct observations, missing points of consideration such as other drivers of vegetation change or temperature effects on ecosystem dynamics, unsupported claims about causality between variables without direct evidence provided for those claims.