Under the auspices of the national ‘973 project’, NSFC projects, and CAS-level financial support, the ITP succeeded in constructing quantitatively interactive models between paleo-proxies and modern climate/environmental parameters through the study of stable isotopes in atmospheric precipitation, spore and pollen in ground surface over different regions, and the compositional study of micro-biological species in lakes. With these quantitative models, paleo-environmental reconstruction can be accomplished, in order to aid in the understanding of the unique land surface processes on the Tibetan Plateau and associated regional environmental effects. Some of the ITP’s latest scientific achievements have recently been reported in one of the top international journals, Nature. In Vol. 454, dedicated to international studies of climate and environment on the Tibetan Plateau, Nature focused in particular on research accomplishments of members of the ITP staff. Nature China also shed light on the study of microbes in snow and ice core samples acquired from the Tibetan Plateau by highlighting the research paper of Yao Tandong et al. in Global Biogeochem. Cycles and approving the new approach to studying climate changes from microbes in ice cores and snow. In summary, the ITP scientific staff in 2008 contributed ninety-one research papers to internationally acknowledged journals, together with two books summarizing China’s glaciological and environmental study of the Tibetan Plateau.
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