The Tibetan Plateau, the world’s largest orogenic plateau, hosts thousands of lakes that play prominent roles as water resources, environmental archives, and sources of natural hazards such as glacier lake outburst floods. Previous studies have reported that the size of lakes on the Tibetan Plateau has changed rapidly in recent years, possibly because of atmospheric warming. Tracking these chan...

The wetlands of the Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau are believed to play an important role in global nutrient cycling, but the composition and diversity of microorganisms in this ecosystem are poorly characterized. An understanding of the effects of geography and microtopography on microbial populations will provide clues to the underlying mechanisms that structure microbial communities. In this study,...

The Tibetan Plateau, the world’s largest orogenic plateau, hosts thousands of lakes that play a prominent role as water resources, environmental archives, and sources of natural hazards such as glacier lake outburst floods. Previous studies reported that the size of the lakes on the Tibetan Plateau has been changing rapidly in recent years, possibly because of contemporary global warming. Track...

Satellite remote sensing provides a powerful tool for assessing lake water surface temperature (LWST) variations, particularly for large water bodies that reside in remote areas. In this study, the MODIS land surface temperature (LST) product level 3 (MOD11A2) was used to investigate the spatiotemporal variation of LWST for 56 large lakes across the Tibetan Plateau and examine the factors affec...

Phenology is critical to ecosystem carbon quantification, and yet has not been well modeled considering both aboveground and belowground environmental variables. This is especially true for alpine and pan-arctic regions where soil physical conditions play a significant role in determining the timing of phenology. Here we examine how the spatiotemporal pattern of satellite-derived phenology is r...

In s coordinates, a variable f e(x, y, s, t) whose horizontal gradient 2=f e is equal to the irrotational part of the horizontal pressure gradient force is referred to as an equivalent isobaric geopotential height. Its inner part can be derived from the solution of a Poisson equation with zero Dirichlet boundary value. Because 2=f (x, y, p, t) is also the irrotational part of the horizontal pre...

Although only relatively few freshwater invertebrate families are reported from the Tibetan Plateau, the degree of endemism may be high. Many endemic lineages occur within permafrost areas, raising questions about the existence of isolated intra-plateau glacial refugia. Moreover, if such refugia existed, it might be instructive to learn whether they were associated with lakes or with more dynam...

For estimating the annual mean of daily solar irradiation in plateau mountainous regions, observed data from 15 radiation stations were used to validate different empirical estimation methods over the Tibetan Plateau. Calibration indicates that sunshine-based site-dependent models perform better than temperature-based ones. Then, the highly rated sunshine-based Ångström model and temperature-ba...

We investigate long-period surface waves (T> 100 s) propagating across the Tibetan Plateau, based on the seismic records from a PASSCAL portable array and nearby Chinese Digital Seismic Network (CDSN) stations. Significant quasi-Love waveform anomalies, associated with fundamental Rayleigh-Love coupling, are consistently observed, suggesting that strong lateral gradients in azimuthal anisotropy...

Tibetan area is the most active continental collision zone on earth. Several major earthquakes occurred around the boundaries of Tibetan plateau and caused massive damages and casualties. The dynamics of this area is not well understood due to the complex structure of Tibet and its surrounding area. In this study, a 3D global flow simulation with only viscous rheology is applied to studying the...