The startup meeting for the program Relation of Environmental Change and Ecosystem of the Tibetan Plateau since Holocene with director Yao Tandong as the chief scientist was held in Beijing on May 26. This program was ITP’s first key program of Knowledge Innovation Project sanctified by CAS. Academician Sun Honglie, Zhe Du and experts Lin Zhenyao, Zhao Qingsong attended the meeting.

The program will start with key processes of modern climate and environment of the Tibetan Plateau, to reveal the significance of some of the paleoenvironment indexes, and set up corresponding transfer function. It will conduct integrative studies on regional scale, and reveal the temporal and spatial distribution and intrinsic mechanism of the plateau’s environmental change as well as its relation with global change. The following 5 aspects will be included in the research:

1.      Key processes of the plateau’s modern climate and environment

2.      Sequence and distribution of the environmental change

3.      Modern variation of the plateau’s cryosphere

4.      Modern major ecosystem and its response to environmental change

5.      Integrative evaluation of the ecosystems in typical regions and restoration of degenerated environment.