Warming worries for Tibet Plateau
Print Edition
A new study by Chinese and American researchers has found that global warming may affect the grasslands on the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau.
Warming could also threaten the ability of farmers and herders to maintain the animals that are key to their existence, while upsetting the ecology of an area where important river systems rise, according to the study, published in the journal Nature Communications.
The study involved factors likely to vary with higher temperatures and unpredictable rainfall, over a five-year period.
“Our results suggest that with a warmer climate, the ecosystem would provide less forage in drought years, and more biomass production in wet years, which is undesirable,” said Jin-Sheng He, a professor in the Department of Ecology, College of Urban and Environmental Sciences at Peking University.
Reduced stability means the alpine ecosystem is not able to provide stable forage for livestock. Reduced stability may also effect climate regulation and water conservation.
“If these findings can be applied to other alpine ecosystems. We need to be concerned about large variations in biomass production in these areas,” professor Lin Jiang of the Georgia Institute of Technology.
The Qinghai-Tibet Plateau covers an area of 2.5 million square kilometers with summer highs seldom rising above 25 degrees Celsius and night temperatures often below freezing. About 9.8 million people live there.
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