Asia's water tank slowly reveals its secrets
Wang Junbo, a researcher from the Tibetan Plateau Research under the Chinese Academy of Sciences
Experts are decoding the mysteries of the Earth’s environmental changes from discoveries beneath lakes on the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau, a lecture held at the Shanghai Science and Technology Museum has revealed.
Not only the world’s roof and third pole, the plateau is also the water tank of Asia, holding more than 9 trillion cubic meters of water in rivers, lakes and glaciers, according to Wang Junbo, a researcher from the Tibetan Plateau Research under the Chinese Academy of Sciences.
The plateau is rich in different natural and hydrological elements. It comprises more than one fourth of the country’s total land, and over half of the country’s lakes, totaling 50,000 square kilometers.
As the world’s largest lake region, most lakes are at altitudes over 4,000 meters, and more than 1,200 lakes are larger than 1 square kilometer.
“The plateau is China’s largest water town,” Wang said.
Lake Namtso on the plateau holds 87 billion cubic meters of water, nearly equal to 2.2 full Three Gorges Reservoirs. It offers rich samples to study the planet.
This summer, Wang led an expedition team to extract a sediment core with a length of 144.79 meters at a depth of 153.44 meters in Namtso. It is the longest sediment core sample obtained by Chinese experts, and it marked the first time for the country to achieve a lake drilling depth of 150 meters.
Sediment core is mud collected from the bottom of lakes. It can reveal long-term cycles in the Earth's climate. The newly extracted sample is expected to interpret the Earth's climate and environment over the past 150,000 years, Wang said.
Climate changes have greatly affected plateau lakes, according to Wang.
Water in plateau lakes mainly comes from rainfall and glaciers. Since the 1970s, many lakes on the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau have witnessed a decrease in salinity of over 50 percent, implying the gradual loss of glaciers.
Wang’s colleague Zhu Haifeng said humans should know their roles in nature and take responsibility to protect it.
