Headwaters

mountains to the sea

Oct 11, 2022

UPDATE: Today, the Long Mekong Daily investigates the headwaters of the Lancang in China before it flows southeast into the Mekong countries of Myanmar, Laos, Thailand, Cambodia and Vietnam. Walking in Tibet for data gathering, climbing glaciers to check the melt and satellite tracking Black necked cranes in Yunnan. Also today, the Long Mekong Daily examines China’s National People’s Congress (NPC), from the 16th to 21st October, to give a brief report card (courtesy of the Beijing Channel) on the countries economic, social, environmental and governance achievements.

Headwaters

As a key part of the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau ecosystem, the sources of the Yangtze and Lancang rivers are sensitive to climate change and the fragile ecological environment. They have an important impact on the stability of the climate system, water security, biodiversity and ecosystems.

In the Yushu Tibetan autonomous prefecture, Qinghai province, the Changjiang River Scientific Research Institute, led by the Changjiang Water Resources Commission of the Ministry of Water Resources, launched the 2022 comprehensive scientific expedition to the sources of the rivers. The scope of this expedition is the Tuotuo River, the source of the Yangtze River, the Dangqu River in the south, the Chumar River in the north, and the source area of the Lancanag River. This scientific expedition will conduct fixed-point "physical examinations" in the source regions, including the observation of ice storage and wetland carbon storage. China Daily

Lancang Mekong Cooperation

The Lancang-Mekong area is one of the regions with the greatest development potential in Asia and beyond. Lancang and Mekong differ in name, but refer to the same river—an important river running across China and the Indo-China Peninsula. Originating from China’s Qinghai-Tibet Plateau, the river has its source in Yushu of Qinghai Province. It is called Lancang River in China, while in its downstream after flowing out of Yunnan Province, it is called the Mekong River, running across Myanmar, Laos, Thailand, Cambodia, and Vietnam, measuring 4,880 kilometers in length, covering an area of 795,000 square kilometers, and feeding altogether 326 million people. The five Mekong River countries are home to 230 million people and boast a combined GDP over US$600 billion and an average annual growth rate of nearly 7%. Linked by mountains and rivers, the six LMC countries feature cultural similarities, and enjoy profound traditional good neighbourliness and friendship and share closely inter-connected security and development interests. LMC China

The Tibet Plateau

From the view of earth science, Tibet plateau is one of the most interesting regions in the world. It is the highest plateau in the world, with an average altitude 4,500 meters. Tibet Plateau has many firsts as following: It has the highest mountains in the world Mt. Qomolangma 8,850 meters. It has the largest canyon in the world Yarlung Zangbo River Great Canyon with a total depth 5,382 meters. It has the largest scale of vertical eco-system zones, from the highest point on the earth 8,850 meters, to the bottom of valley 900 meters elevation. It has numerous glaciers and originations of many important rivers are here. It has very unique environment and many unique plateaus.

Tibet Plateau is the main body of the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau, consisting of high mountains and great rivers, prairie and gorges. On the Tibet Plateau stands the world-famous Himalayas in southwest, the Kunlun Mountains and the Kalakunlun Mountains spread the northwest, the Gangdisi, Tanggula and Nyainqentanglha Mountains traverse the middle, and the Hengduan Mountains is its east barrier. There are 6 peaks of over 8,000 meters at sea level, 50 peaks of over 7,000 meters at sea level and numerous peaks of over 6,000 meters at sea level in Tibet, where the world's highest summit Mt. Everest erects with an elevation of 8848.13 meters.

Amidst the numerous high and gigantic mountains spread a range of hills, lakes and gorges, constituting undulation alpine prairie. The famous Qiangtang Grasslands on North Tibet spreads from east to west over 2,400 kilometers and from north to south over 700 kilometers, averaging 4,500 meters at sea level. The boundless grassland is the principal pastoral area in Tibet. China.org

Like the Arctic, over the past 50 years, the Tibetan Plateau is experiencing warming faster than elsewhere. There are more than 46,000 glaciers in China, mainly distributed on the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau. Most of them are experiencing ablation and shrinkage, and the degradation of alpine grasslands, vegetation, wetlands and permafrost will have an ecological and environmental security risk in China and throughout Asia.

Yang Yong said his goal is to collect scientific data on the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau in order to better explore how to most effectively protect and develop the Three River Sources, the source of China's three major rivers: the Yellow River, the Yangtze River, and the Lancang River. The Sanjiangyuan Nature Reserve was established in 2000 to cope with the Yellow River's runoff: after decades of overuse and pollution, the Yellow River's runoff failed to flow into the sea for several months in the late 1990s, causing nationwide alarm. To view the full interactive story, visit the iFeng website.

Headwater Science

The Qinghai–Tibetan Plateau (QTP), named the Asian Water Towers, feeds more than 2.5 billion people in down- stream regions. It is still unknown how much water outflows from this region and its contribution to large Asian rivers. The Global Land Data Assimilation System (GLDAS) results show that the simulated dry season runoff in the GLDAS model is generally lower than the observed value, which is mainly because most hydrological models only consider the potential evapotranspiration (ET) when simulating ET, while ignoring the water constraint factor. Glacier melt runoff plays an important role in the QTP runoff, with a proportion of approximately 22%. It is relatively high in the Tarim River basin (83%), Syr Darya River and Amu Darya River basins (69%), and Indus River basin (60%). The contribution ratio also reaches 23% in the Yarlung Zangbo– Brahmaputra River and Ganges River basins, whereas it is the lowest in the Irrawaddy River basin (2%). According to the Noah10_v2.0 simulations, the mean annual runoff provided by the QTP exceeds 620 billion cubic metres, of which approximately 440 billion cubic metres flow out of the QTP and supply downstream regions of international rivers. The contribution ratio of the QTP runoff to the total runoff of its affected basins is approximately 16%. Science Direct

More Headwater Science

In this three decade study of the the Upper Lancang River (ULR), which is one of the braided rivers in the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau of China, Landsat images obtained in the years between 1989 and 2018 were used to extract flowing and non-flowing channels, active channel widths (unvegetated bars and flowing channels), and calculated lateral shifting rates of the main channel for the 13 periods. An empirical equation between vegetation area (Av) calculated from the high-resolution ortho-photo derived from an Unmanned Aerial Vehicle survey and Normalized Difference Vegetation Index for pixels of the Landsat image obtained at the same time. This relationship allowed us to estimate Av for other 12 selected years. We found that (1) braiding intensity increases with low discharges, indicating that the ULR is a very well-connected braided system with groundwater providing a large set of aquatic habitats, (2) this braided system is very well-supplied and actively shifting in relation to peak flow and flood duration, and (3) The ULR supports a progressive vegetation encroachment, which seems to be linked to temperature rising. Our study showed several similar morphological patterns to those in other braided rivers, such as the ones observed in the European Alps but much more active, well-supplied and highly connected. These similarities suggest that similar morphodynamic processes might take effect in the braided rivers with very high elevations and potentially high spots of biodiversity, indicating the ULR may be a reference for this region similarly to the Tagliamento in the Alps, but it seems that this system can be very sensitive to global change due to vegetation encroachment following temperature rising and decreases of low flows. Authorea

Yunnan’s Black Necked Crane

Using satellite tracking technology, this sub project (2019QZKK05010409) tracked the overwintering population in the middle of black necked Crane. After catching the black necked Crane by the foot button method, we adopt the foot ring method to fix the tracker, which greatly improves the tracking achievement rate and the amount of data obtained. When the power is ideal, the sampling frequency can be accelerated to one point in half an hour. Get more detailed tracking data. The relevant results show that the selection of wintering sites for black necked cranes is highly stable. Preliminary analysis shows that there is a strong connecting line between wintering sites and breeding sites, but there are also the characteristics of larvae in different summers. The strong migration connectivity indicates that black necked cranes are more vulnerable to environmental changes. This data set contains 200 habitat photos of black necked cranes and 1276 activity data of young black necked cranes. The satellite tracking data sheet of young black necked Crane recorded longitude and latitude, date, altitude, speed, temperature and other information. National Tibet Data Centre

THE NPC

“The People’s Congress System is the fundamental political system in China. According to the Constitution of the People’s Republic of China, all State power belongs to the people. The National People’s Congress (NPC) and the local people’s congresses at various levels are the bodies through which the people exercise State power. The people’s congresses at all levels are constituted through democratic elections, and are responsible to the people and subject to their supervision. All administrative, supervisory, judicial and procuratorial organs of the State are created by the people’s congresses to which they are responsible and by which they are supervised.” NPC