Spatiotemporal Changes in Prehistoric Land Use in Upper and Middle Reaches of Yellow River Valley

During the Holocene, the upper and middle reaches of the Yellow River valley in China were pivotal areas for agricultural development. Quantitatively reconstructing the spatiotemporal changes in prehistoric human land use is essential for understanding, from a long-term perspective, the interactions among evolutions of climate, agriculture, and human activities. Based on 327 archaeological sites and the PLUM (prehistoric land use model), we quantitatively reconstructed human land use changes from 6 to 3 ka BP (thousands of years before the present) in the Tao River valley, the second-largest tributary in the upper reach of the Yellow River valley. The results indicated that regional land use areas increased from 571 km² to 1468 km², with spatial expansion from the lower reach to the upper–middle reach of the Tao River valley. A comparison of the five areas distributed across the upper and middle reaches of the Yellow River valley revealed two different trends of increasing land use from 8 to 3 ka BP within these areas. The first group (the Wei River and Yiluo River valleys) exhibited rapid and substantial growth before 5 ka BP, while the second group (the Huangshui River and Tao River valleys, and the Yunlin district) showed a much slower and less significant increase before 5 ka BP, but a more obvious increase thereafter. The asynchronous increases in these areas indicate an expansion of land use from the southeastern part of the upper and middle reaches of the Yellow River Valley to across the entire region between 8 and 3 ka BP, which was primarily driven by agricultural development and cultural communication.