Scientists probe lake that keeps growing
Print Edition
WHERE Rigzin Chophel played with his childhood friends is now at the bottom of a lake, and he is worried more land will be submerged.
The 45-year-old herdsman lives in Tseten, a village on the southern bank of Serling Tso Lake which has grown over 40 percent between 1976 and 2009.
The village has around 42,000 hectares of land for herdsmen to raise their cattle. Rigzin has been the director of the village Party committee for the past 15 years.
“Over a dozen families have complained to me that their land has been inundated by the lake. Five of them have suffered great losses,” he said.
Herdsman Nordey pointed toward a lakeside area, and said that was where he used to live.
“About six years ago, the lake was expanding very fast. There were fences between my house and the lake, and every year I had to move the fences closer to the house,” he said.
He has now built a new home a few kilometers from the lake.
Ten years ago, the lake was expanding at an even faster pace than it is now, said Rigzin.
“We marked the area of the lake. It expanded by 20 to 30 steps a year, especially noticeable in low-lying areas,” he said.
In 2014, Serling Tso measured 2,391 square kilometers.
It has replaced the Buddhist holy lake Namtso as Tibet’s largest lake at over 45 kilometers wide and almost 78 kilometers in length.
Since 1990, the plateau’s 1,000 lakes have seen an increase of 100 billion cubic meters of water, with Serling Tso probably the fastest-growing lake, according to scientists from the Institute of Qinghai-Tibet Plateau Research of Chinese Academy of Sciences.
A group of them recently began a expedition on the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau to study changes in climate, biodiversity, and environment.
Zhu Liping, a researcher leading the lake observation team, said it will study the whole water system from Serling Tso to the origin of the Yangtze River.
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