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Chapter 06
Climate and Study of Glaciers
for investigating fundamental processes of geodynamics and environmental change. Particular questions of general scientific interest and global relevance include the geosphere structure and its evolution, uplift mechanisms and processes, high-resolution palaeo-environmental changes, land surface characteristics and processes, linkages between plateau uplift and atmospheric processes, evolutionary adaptation of organisms to an extreme environment, and the responses and interactions of fragile ecosystems and climate to human impacts and Global Change. Presently, China is undergoing a tremendous economic transition with considerable effects on land-use and consequences for ecosystems and climate, also on the Tibetan Plateau. China is seeking international research collaborations, and recent relaxation in logistic and bureaucratic restrictions in access and scientific work has improved the general conditions for larger, coordinated, and interdisciplinary studies on the Tibetan Plateau.
German geoscience has a long tradition and broad expertise in research on the Tibetan Plateau. A new opportunity to integrate different research targets and to develop coordinated research programmes has opened up through the foundation of the Institute of Tibetan Plateau Research in 2003 by the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) and through a memorandum signed by CAS and DFG in 2004. Within this framework, two project bundles (Bundelantrage) and three Sino-German workshops have fostered coordinated research on the Tibetan Plateau under SinoGerman collaboration and thus provided milestones for the proposed "Priority Programme" Tip, envisaged to start in January 2008.
2. State of the art
The impact of surface uplift on climate evolution is an outstanding and crucial interaction related to the Tibetan Plateau and has led to the development of highly complex and vulnerable ecosystems. Since the appearance of man in the Neolithic, human impacts generally led to sustainable land use until recently. Today, industrial activity, global warming, and growing population impose multiple threats to Tibetan ecosystems with probably far reaching consequences. Our present knowledge of the relevant processes, their relationships and feedbacks in uplift, climate evolution, ecosystems, and human impacts is still insufficient. There are essential uncertainties in the record and process-oriented understanding of their temporal and spatial evolution. Other reasons for scarcity of data are the missing infrastructure, limited accessibility, and bureaucratic restrictions in admission of foreign scientists to the Tibetan Plateau in the past. The existing knowledge is summarised below, larger interdisciplinary. integrated, and coordinated studies are generally missing. The Chinese Academy of Science has recognised the importance of future systematic, interdisciplinary, Tibetan Plateau research, by installing the Institute of Tibetan Plateau Research (see chapter 4). It was established with consultation of DFG and MPG as the centre for scientific issues related to the Tibetan Plateau and for fostering international collaborative research programs, where Germany is considered to be a key partner.
Both, elevation and surface cover, control surface temperature and climate [13,14] and therefore have to be considered as input parameters for regional and global climate modeling. The uplift history of the Tibetan Plateau is still poorly known because direct methods to determine palaeo elevations are problematic and accordant data are very limited and contradictory [15]. Tibetan Plateau: Formation-Climate-Ecosystems
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