Tibet on EARTH Magazine

Travels in Geology: Lhasa, Tibet: Journey to the roof of the world

Tue, 18 Dec 2018 11:23:06 -0500

No visit to the windswept Tibetan Plateau would be complete without seeing Mount Everest, the world's highest peak. Credit: Lon Abbott and Terri Cook.

Few destinations are as alluring as the wild and windswept Tibetan Plateau. With an average elevation of 4,500 meters, it is Earth’s highest tableland and one of the most isolated regions on the planet. Tibet’s capital, Lhasa, one of the world’s highest cities, is simply breathtaking — both literally, given the low oxygen levels at this altitude, and figuratively, with its mountainous backdrop and the gleaming whitewashed walls of Potala Palace, an enduring symbol of Tibetan Buddhism, rising high above the Old Town. As we saw firsthand when our family visited last summer, Lhasa — with its intricately painted statues, gilded-dome stupas housing Buddhist relics, and thousands of prayer wheels glistening in the flickering light of yak-butter candles — is a place that’s both above and apart from the rest of the world.

Getting there and getting around Tibet

Tue, 18 Dec 2018 11:21:22 -0500

“Tibet is a long way from most everywhere. There are no direct flights from North America, so it’s usually cheapest and most convenient to fly into a major Chinese city such as Beijing and then catch the next flight to Lhasa Gonggar Airport (LXA). Air China, Tibet Airlines, Sichuan Airlines and China Southern are among the carriers offering direct and connecting flights to Lhasa from most major Chinese cities. Sichuan Airlines and Air China also provide nonstop service from Kathmandu, Nepal. The Lhasa airport is located 65 kilometers south of the city center and takes about an hour to reach.

Oldest "Third Pole" ice core recovered

Mon, 19 Mar 2018 14:17:39 -0400

Lonnie Thompson cuts an ice core retrieved from the Guliya Ice Cap in the Kunlun Mountains in Tibet. Credit: Giuliano Bertagna/Byrd Polar and Climate Research Center.

Holding massive reservoirs of ice, high-altitude glaciers, such as those in the Himalayas, are sometimes referred to as Earth’s “Third Pole.” The Guliya Ice Cap, on the Tibetan Plateau, has now produced the oldest ice ever drilled outside the Arctic or Antarctica.

Tibetan Plateau populated long before advent of agriculture

Mon, 15 May 2017 14:18:53 -0400

Due to the harsh living conditions of the Tibetan Plateau — which has an average elevation over 4,500 meters — archaeologists have long assumed that people didn’t live in the Himalayan high country until after the adoption of agriculture in this region of the world, about 3,600 years ago. But a new study of a trove of handprints and footprints found around a fossilized mud spring in Tibet is suggesting that people may have lived here as early as 13,000 years ago.

China quake kills at least 400

Thu, 05 Jan 2012 06:41:58 -0500

A magnitude-6.9 earthquake struck the western Chinese province of Qinghai early this morning, killing hundreds. U.S. Geological Survey, National Earthquake Information Center

Update:

In 2008, it was the Longmen Shan Fault, a 250-kilometer long thrust fault that divides the 6,500-meter-high Tibetan Plateau from the lower Sichuan basin, which ruptured. However, today's series of quakes occurred several hundred kilometers to the northwest, in the eastern Tibetan Plateau, and were the result of strike-slip faulting, according to USGS.