The “Tibetan Plateau: Formation – Climate – Ecosystems” (TiP) project launched by the DFG as a priority program in 2008 chose the Institute of Tibetan Plateau Research, Chinese Academy of Science (ITP CAS) as its only collaborator in China. It comes into formation after years’ of mutually-benefited cooperation between Chinese and German scientists on the Tibetan Plateau research. TiP researches processes, interactions, and feedbacks of the driving forces for plateau formation, climate evolution and mechanism, and the effects of environmental changes and on ecosystems on different time scales. TiP is the first concerted, multidisciplinary and holistic approach dealing with processes, interactions and feedbacks in the framework of Tibetan Plateau uplift and the related evolution of climate and ecosystems, including human impacts. It is designed to facilitate bilateral multidisciplinary projects, stimulate research on the Tibetan Plateau, and promote scientific exchange also of young scientists from China and Germany.

So far, more than 100 scientists from various disciplines have been involved in the project, with a holistic approach to geosystems, ecosystems and climate change on the Tibetan plateau. 14 Sino-German cooperative research projects are running under the roof of TiP, and another 5 new projects have been approved for the second funding period, starting in 2010 (for more detailed information please refer to the TiP homepage http://www.tip.uni-tuebingen.de).

Today the TiP project is gradually growing into an umbrella for the further development in Sino-German cooperation on Tibetan plateau research, and a very important component in the newly-initiated Third Pole Environment (TPE).