When asked where “the village of water” is in China, most Chinese would probably answer without hesitation: in the southern china, of course. However, according to news released by Xinhua News-agency on May 8th, the natural “village of water” exactly lies on the Tibetan Plateau, where there are 1091 lakes, larger than 1km2 each. On the whole, the total lake area on the Plateau reaches 44993.3km2, accounting for about 49.5% of the total lake coverage in China. Out of the 27 large-scale lakes with the acreage surpassing 500km2 each, 10 are located on the Plateau.
“Most of the lakes came into being in the process of the uplift of Tibetan Plateau,” explained Prof. Zhu Liping, Secretary of Tibetan Plateau Research Society and professor of ITP, “as a result, both their location and shape are in coordination with the movement line of structural landform. What’s more, most of the lakes are fairly deep, with very precipitous geomorphology underwater.”
There is about 608 billion m3 of water storage in the lakes on the Plateau. This number takes up more than 70% of the total water storage in China. Due to the existence of high mountains and valleys in the Plateau, large contrast caused by differential latitudes is usually the case with lakes there, producing considerable amount of water and energy resources in
West China. Besides, salt is another important resource stored in the lakes on the Plateau; the Chaidam Basin alone is said to hold more than half of the expected total salt storage in China. In it there is the Charhan Salt Lake, 4700km2 in acreage, storing such a bountiful amount of salt that even the whole earth can depend on it for as much as two thousand years.
“To study the traces of these lakes on the environmental changes could lead us to reasonable utilization of lake resources, which is a fundamental principle in human’s protection, scientific development and management of the environment.” Said Prof Zhu.
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