Addressing Impacts of Glacier and Permafrost Changes on the Qinghai- Tibet Plateau

With a unique eco-environmental system, the QinghaiTibet Plateau plays a fundamental role in safeguarding the local socioeconomic development and has an irreplaceable position in ensuring eco-environmental security in China and in the whole of Asia. Over the past 30 years, obvious climate change, predominantly global warming, has an extremely remarkable impact on the cryosphere of the plateau, the world’s largest area of midand low-altitude glaciers and permafrost. What is the effect of these changes on the regional socioeconomic development? How to deal with them? These questions concern both government officials and scientists, and so the CAS Academic Divisions (CASAD) began a research project in 2006. Climate change has led to an accelerated receding of mountain glaciers, says the research report, which was released in 2009. “As a result, mountain disasters, such as glacier lake outburst floods, mud-rock flows and landslides, have become more frequent and serious. In addition, the water levels of lakes are rising to inundate nearby grasslands.” The warming has also caused the melting of permafrost in various degrees, with serious impacts on major road construction and engineering projects, and with direct or potential threats to local environmental and ecological systems, observes the research panel, which comprised more than 20 Addressing Impacts of Glacier and Permafrost Changes on the QinghaiTibet Plateau