| Session Details | |
| Section | IG - Interdisciplinary Geosciences |
| Session Title | The Third Pole Environment (TPE) |
| Main Convener | Prof. Yaoming Ma (Chinese Academy of Sciences, China) |
| Co-convener(s) | Dr. Bob Su (University of Twente, Netherlands) Prof. Fan Zhang (Chinese Academy of Sciences, China) Dr. Weicai Wang (Institute of Tibetan Plateau Research, Chinese Academy of Sciences, China) |
| Session Description | The Third Pole covering the Tibetan Plateau and surrounding region locates in the core of The Belt and Road. The >20 countries in and around the Third Pole have close correlation in the aspect of Geography, climate, and environment issues. Water shortage has seriously hampered the development of the regional economy. As the world's major glacial melt water recharge area, the region is significantly affected by the climate change. The regional environment is seriously polluted by the Central Asia Dust Storm and South Asian Brown Cloud. Under the impact of human activities and global change, biodiversity in the region is highly threatened. A series of observation, remote sensing and numerical modeling research on TPE have been initiated and implemented by scientists from various nations. We propose a session dedicated to TPE studies to addresses ‘water – ice – air – vegetation – soil – human’ interactions, and thus serve for the maintenance of regional environment sustainability. Co-sponsored by TPE Program (www.tpe.ac.cn/en/), this session welcomes contributions on a wide range of relevant topics, such as issues to improve the understanding of the interactions of the Asian monsoon, Westerly, glaciers, rivers, lakes in terms of water and energy budgets in order to assess and understand the causes of changes in cryosphere, hydrosphere, and biosphere in relation to changes of atmosphere, and to predict possible changes in the Third Pole Environment. Contributions dealing with the observation and modelling of relevant processes in Arctic and Antarctica as well as other high elevation areas are also welcome. |