Research Highlights

• Subject Category:
  • Earth & environment

Published online: 9 April 2008 | doi:10.1038/nchina.2008.81

Tibetan Plateau: Central rising

Wei Zeng

Introduction

© (2008) Jeff Schmaltz, MODIS Rapid Response Project at NASA/GSFC

The 4,000-metre-high Tibetan Plateau (pictured), also known as 'the Roof of the World', is the highest and biggest plateau on Earth. Its uplift, formed gradually through a sequence of collision events between the Asian and Indian tectonic plates, is thought to have significant effects on the local and global climate. There is much controversy over when and how the Tibetan Plateau uplift happened. Chengshan Wang at China University of Geosciences in Beijing, Xixi Zhao at the University of California and co-workers¹ have discovered that the central region of the Tibetan Plateau began the uplift first, around 40 million years ago. This was followed by the elevation of mountain ranges in today's northern and southern margins at a much later time.

The researchers deduced the sequence of uplift events through studies of prehistoric magnetic strata, sediments, water-current flow and radiometric dating. Based on these geological data, they showed that the central region of the plateau, including the Lhasa and southern Qiangtang terranes, reached its current height by the Late Paleogene period (around 40 million years ago).

The plateau subsequently expanded as a result of continual collisions between the Asian and Indian plates. To the south, ranges in the Himalayas were elevated in the Neogene Period (around 20 million years ago). To the north, ranges in the Qilian Shan were elevated in the Late Cenozoic Era (12­ million to 40 million years ago). These ranges formed what are today's southern and northern margins of the Tibetan Plateau.

The authors of this work are from:
State Key Laboratory of Geological Processes and Mineral Resources, Research Center for Tibetan Plateau Geology, and School of Geosciences, China University of Geosciences, Beijing, China; Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences and Institute of Geophysics and Planetary Physics, University of California, Santa Cruz, California, USA; Laboratory of Marine Geology, Tongji University, Shanghai, China; Department of Geological and Environmental Sciences, Stanford University, California, USA; School of Geosciences, Chengdu University of Technology, Chengdu, China.

Reference

1. Wang, C. et al. Constraints on the early uplift history of the Tibetan Plateau. PNAS 105, 4987–4992 (2008). | Article | ChemPort |