Transltated from www.xinhua.com

At present, an international expedition jointly carried out by Chinese, American and Japanese scientists is on the Tibetan Plateau to explore glaciers in Himalayas and climate change in Tanggula and Nianqing Tanggula regions.

In the days to follow, more scientists from CAS will go to Tibet for a closer study of the Plateau. Prof. Yao Tandong, director of ITP, recently told reporters that ITP’s Lahsa branch, which will be completed by 2005, will serve as a main working place for its scientific staff in the future. ITP will also invite more world- famous scholars to unveil together the mysteries there.

It has been widely accepted that 100 million years ago, the Tibetan Plateau was lying in Paleao-Mediterranean, with flat Eurasia on its north and large Indian subcontinent on its south. Gradually, Indian Ocean began to expand, causing great crustal movements. The rise of the continent thereupon finally formed the Tibetan Plateau, now known as the third pole of the earth. Even today, it is still growing 0.6-0.9cm yearly.

Tibet has long been a fascinating place with its unique location and culture. But its structural variation and its influence on the whole globe attract the scientific community more. Prof. Yao told us that hundreds of ITP researchers, now working in Beijing, would move to Lahsa once its office building there is completed. Close to the Plateau, the researchers can conduct filed investigations more easily to obtain first-handed statistics concerning the structure and evolution of the geosphere on the Plateau, environmental variation and global change, landscaping and atmospheric process, biogenetics and natural resources and so on.  

Instead of working separately and individually, ITP plans to pool the international leading force in Tibetan research to conduct complex studies. Their studies will deal with such issues as the uplifting of the plateau, whether its landscaping and atmospheric process is the driving force behind Asian environmental change and how our live system adjust and alter to the radical environment, etc. Prof. Yao added.

The Tibetan Plateau has its unique continental ecosystem and rich genetic bank of alpine biology, thus becomes an ideal place for studying inner geo-substances and interactions between energy exchange and various lithospheres.