August 22-24. 2013, the 28th Himalayan Karakorum Tibet (HKT) workshop and 6th international Symposium on Tibetan Plateau (ISTP) joint conference kicked off in Tuebingen, Germany. The conference was hosted by the University of Tuebingen Germany, and jointly sponsored by the ITPCAS and China Society on Tibet Plateau.

Prof. Bernd Engler, Rector of the University, and Mr. Boris Palmer, mayor of Tuebingen showed support to the conference by giving welcome speeches at the opening ceremony. Then Prof. Paul Kapp of University of Arizona, U.S., Prof. YAO Tandong of ITPCAS, Prof. Gerard Roe of Washington State University US and Prof. Andreas Mulch of Senckenberg Research Institute and Natural History Museums, Germany took turns to talk at the plenary session, addressing issues on, respectively, ‘The Cenozoic Subduction History of Greater Indian Lithosphere Beneath Tibet’, ‘Glacial variations in response to climate change on the Third Pole’, ‘The influence of Tibet on the Climate of Asia’, and ‘Stable Isotope Paleoaltimetry of the Tibetan-Himalayan System’.

Over 200 participants from 15 countries attended the conference, which consisted of two major sessions. Session 1 mainly addressed geodynamics, with discussions and presentations revolving around themes such as the Early & Pre-Collisional ‘Plateau’, India-Asia Collision, Lithosphere Structure & Seismology, Large-Scale Deformation, and Crustal Doming, Exhumation and Lateral Extrusion, etc. While session 2 was themed by climate, hydrology, cryosphere and ecosystems, with presentations and discussions revolving around the following themes: Pleistocene Climate；Holocene Climate & Ecosystems；Lake Systems；Cryosphere & Hydrosphere；Landscape Evolution & Geomorphology；Atmosphere & Climate Modeling.

Public evening lectures were also given during the conference, inviting Dr. Solmaz Mohadjer, Director of Emergency Education of the program called Teachers Without Borders, to talk about “Lessons for Life - From advancements in Earth sciences to practical geohazards awareness through schools in Central and South Asia”, and Dr. David Molden, Director-General of ICIMOD, to present a talk on “Unravelling Himalayan Mysteries - The Role of Science and Cooperation”.

This was the second HKT-ISTP joint conference after the HKT24th-ISTP5th joint one in Beijing in 2009. The third joint conference was planned in four years’ time.