The topics addressed at the 5th TPE workshop were recently covered by top scientific journals such as Nature, Science and Scientific American.
In latest news reports in, respectively, Scientific American and Nature, they highlighted the latest finding by ITP researcher LIANG Eryuan and his colleagues that forests at high-altitudes in the Himalayas and Tibetan Plateau are at risk of dying off or retreating downslope due to climate change. Variation of those high-altitude forests and timberline would "threaten the region’s rich biodiversity", said the reports entitled "High-Altitude Forests in the Himalayas Harder Hit by Droughts" and "Droughts threaten high-altitude Himalayan forests".
Another coverage focused on two studies reported during the 5th TPE Workshop that found dirty glaciers melt just as fast as clean ones. According to those studies, debris-covered glaciers might be disappearing faster than previously thought, thus threatening the long-term water supply of more than a billion people living in the region. This piece of news was reported in Science, bringing TPE workshop topics to a wider academic community.
The 5th TPE Workshop was successfully held last December in Berlin, with a focus on the dynamics and global linkages. International scientists experienced at Third Pole environment study attended and shared their latest findings and understanding of challenges in the TPE study.
For details about those coverages, please click on the following links:
http://www.nature.com/news/droughts-threaten-high-altitude-himalayan-forests-1.16806
http://news.sciencemag.org/asiapacific/2015/01/dirty-glaciers-melt-just-fast-clean-ones