Tibetan Plateau

Summary

The Tibetan Plateau (, also known as the Qinghai–Tibet Plateau or the Qing–Zang Plateau () or as the Himalayan Plateau in India, is a vast elevated plateau located at the intersection of Central, South and East Asia covering most of the Tibet Autonomous Region, most of Qinghai, western half of Sichuan, Southern Gansu provinces in Western China, southern Xinjiang, Bhutan, the Indian regions of Ladakh and Lahaul and Spiti (Himachal Pradesh) as well as Gilgit-Baltistan in Pakistan, northwestern Nepal, eastern Tajikistan and southern Kyrgyzstan. It stretches approximately north to south and east to west. It is the world's highest and largest plateau above sea level, with an area of (about five times the size of Metropolitan France). With an average elevation exceeding and being surrounded by imposing mountain ranges that harbor the world's two highest summits, Mount Everest and K2, the Tibetan Plateau is often referred to as "the Roof of the World". The Tibetan Plateau contains the

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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tibetan_Plateau

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Unexpectedly minor nitrous oxide emissions from fluvial networks draining permafrost catchments of the East Qinghai-Tibet Plateau

Tom Ian Battin, Sibo Zhang

Streams and rivers emit substantial amounts of nitrous oxide (N2O) and are therefore an essential component of global nitrogen (N) cycle. Permafrost soils store a large reservoir of dormant N that, upon thawing, can enter fluvial networks and partly degrade to N2O, yet the role of waterborne release of N2O in permafrost regions is unclear. Here we report N2O concentrations and fluxes during different seasons between 2016 and 2018 in four watersheds on the East Qinghai-Tibet Plateau. Thawing permafrost soils are known to emit N2O at a high rate, but permafrost rivers draining the East Qinghai-Tibet Plateau behave as unexpectedly minor sources of atmospheric N2O. Such low N2O fluxes are associated with low riverine dissolved inorganic N (DIN) after terrestrial plant uptake, unfavorable conditions for N2O generation via denitrification, and low N2O yield due to a small ratio of nitrite reductase: nitrous oxide reductase in these rivers. We estimate fluvial N2O emissions of 0.432 − 0.463 Gg N2O-N yr−1 from permafrost landscapes on the entire Qinghai-Tibet Plateau, which is marginal (~0.15%) given their areal contribution to global streams and rivers (0.7%). However, we suggest that these permafrost-affected rivers can shift from minor sources to strong emitters in the warmer future, likely giving rise to the permafrost non-carbon feedback that intensifies warming.

2022

The present work is related to the recent research topics in hydrology devoted to the integration of field knowledge into the hydrological modelling. The study catchment is the Haute-Mentue experimental basin (12.5 km2) located in western Switzerland, in the Plateau region. In order to complete the existing knowledge about the hydrological behaviour of the study catchment, a field experimental approach has been conducted at two scales: catchment (environmental tracing) and local scale (TDR soil moisture measurements). The environmental tracing application has led to the same conclusion as previous researches: hydrological behaviour is strongly influenced by the catchment antecedent conditions and by the rainfall duration and intensity. The geology characteristics (moraine or molasse) explain the main differences in the hydrological behaviour that have been observed so far. As the environmental tracing does not allow easy identification of the mechanisms responsible for the runoff generation, TDR equipments have been installed on two hillslopes with different geological characteristics, which allowed monitoring of the soil moisture at different depths along the hillslope during two intensive campaigns in 2002 and 2003. Association of the environmental tracing and TDR technique has finally allowed precising the conceptual model of two head sub-catchments of the Haute-Mentue catchment. The second part of the research is devoted to the hydrological modelling. A simple conceptual model (TOPMODEL) has been considered as an appropriate representation of the hydrological processes on the Haute-Mentue catchment. In order to estimate TOPMODEL parameters and to take into account uncertainty associated with estimated parameters and model output, a Bayesian approach has been proposed and two Bayesian techniques have been compared: GLUE (Generalized Likelihood Uncertainty Estimation) and MCMC (Monte Carlo Markov Chains). The role of the statistical corrections on the resulting parameters and model output uncertainty has been assessed. In the last part of the present research, the Bayesian methodology has been extended to the case of multi-response calibration. Previous field acquired knowledge (i.e. soil storage saturation deficit, stream water silica and calcium concentrations) has been used to constrain parametrization of the classical and of a modified version of TOPMODEL. In both cases, multi-calibration led to trade-off behaviour of the efficiencies of the simulated responses. The total modelling uncertainty of the new introduced responses was considerably reduced at the expense of an increase in the total modelling uncertainty of the simulated discharges.

EPFL2004

Missing water from the Qiangtang Basin on the Tibetan Plateau

David Andrew Barry, Jiaqi Chen, Tao Wang

The Qiangtang Basin is a large endorheic basin in the inner part of the Tibetan Plateau and has been thought to be a dry region in contrast with its wet surrounding outer region that feeds all the major Asian rivers. Combining surface hydrological data with modelling and satellite data between 2002 and 2016, our study reveals that an enormous amount of water, approximately 54 ± 4 cubic kilometers, is unaccounted for annually in the Qiangtang Basin. The amount of missing water is comparable to the total annual discharge of the Yellow River. Data from the Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE) show little increase of local terrestrial water storage. Thus, the missing water must have flowed out of the basin through underground passages. Interpreting this result in the context of recent seismic and geological studies of Tibet, we suggest that a significant amount of meteoric water in the Qiangtang Basin leaks out by way of groundwater flow through deep normal faults and tensional fractures along the nearly N-S rift valleys that are oriented sub-normal to and cross the surficial hydrological divide on the southern margin of the basin. Cross-basin groundwater outflow of such a magnitude defies the traditional view of basin-scale water cycle and leads to a very different picture from the previous hydrological view of the Qiangtang Basin. The finding calls for major rethinking of the regional water balance.

2021

EPFL2004