Tibetan plateau will experience significant “ecosystem shift” due to climate change and human activities, reducing future water supply to China and South AsiaLarge areas of grasslands, alpine meadows, wetlands and permafrost will disappear on the Tibetan plateau by 2050, with serious implications for environmental security in China and South Asia, a research paperpublished by scientists at the Kunming Institute of Botany has warned.
Warming temperatures, combined with a dramatic infrastructure boom, a growing population and over grazing will combine to push fragile ecosystems on the world’s largest and highest plateau from one state to another. This irreversible shift which will mean the region no longer provides key environmental services – such as water and carbon storage – to the rest of Asia.[Source]