Advances in Studies of Wetlands in Qinghai-Tibet Plateau

Abstract

The Qinghai-Tibet Plateau is a unique geographical region with the highest elevation located at unique latitudes in the world and shows special dynamic and thermal effects, thus responsible for a conspicuous hydrological cycle in the atmosphere within Asian monsoon areas, and an extremely sensitive region of land-air interactions in East Asia. It is also one of areas which is less disturbed by human activities on the surface of the earth, serving as a foreboding or early-warning area for global changes. Wetland, located in the transitional zones between aquatic and terrestrial ecosystems, is an important landscape and ecosystem. Wetlands in Qinghai-Tibet Plateau mainly include alpine marshes, alpine swampy meadow and alpine lakes, which play important roles in water storage, water supply, adjusting climate and abating global water shortage and so on. Therefore Wetlands in Qinghai-Tibet Plateau are very important for global climate changes. In this paper we summarized progresses in several study fields of wetlands in Qinghai-Tibet Plateau, such as classification of wetland types, wetland soils, wetland vegetation, formation and evolvement of peat, wetland creature, paleobotany and pristine climate, greenhouse gases emission and wetland degeneration etc., indicating that wetlands in Qinghai-Tibet Plateau have been paid much attention to. But studies on these fields also need to be strengthened. Finally, the study fields in the future were also put forward as follows: (1) Relationship between landscape pattern of plateau wetlands and ecological processes such as sediment processes, biogeochemical processes, eco-hydraulic processes; (2) Relationship between global climate changes and dynamic changes in wetland landscape patterns, including greenhouse effects and global carbon cycles, and relationship between pristine climate and pristine environment changes; (3) Restoration and conservation of plateau wetlands serious degenerated, including degeneration processes and forcing mechanism, ecological methods for restoration and conservation and index system of ecosystem health assessment and ecological risk assessment.