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A comprehensive understanding of the regional vegetation responses to long-term climate change will help forecast earth system dynamics.Based on a new well-dated pollen dataset from Kanas Lake and a review of published pollen records from in and around the Altai Mountains,the regional vegetation dynamics and forcing mechanisms are discussed.In the Altai Mountains,the forest optimum occurred during 10-7 ka for the upper forest zone and a tree line decline and/or ecological shifts were caused by climatic cooling from around 7 ka.In the lower forest zone,the forest reached an optimum in the middle Holocene,and then increased openness of the forest,possibly caused by both climatic cooling and human activities,occurred in the late Holocene.In the lower basins or plains around the Altai Mountains,the development of proto-grassland or forest benefited from increasing humidity in the middle to late Holocene.Key Points:A new pollen data set from a large deep lake was used to interpret the regional vegetation and climate of the southern Altai Mountains.The vegetation showed different long-term responses to climate change in and around the Altai Mountains.Vegetation dynamics and their impact on geophysical processes should be incorporated into coupled vegetation-climate models.