Evolution of drought and flood events on the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau and key issues for response
The journal Science China Earth Sciences recently published online the research conducted by Professor Yan Denghua, Professor Qin Tianling, and Dr. Lu Jie from the China Institute of Water Resources and Hydropower Research. The research team emphasized the strategic importance of the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau to China's long-term water and ecological security. However, they also pointed out that extreme droughts and floods alternate in this region, and ecosystem instability has become increasingly prominent. Additionally, new forms of flood disasters, such as those caused by glacial lake dam breaks, ice melting, and snow melting, have intensified.
Facing the requirements of disaster prevention under the new situation of drought and flood on the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau and in response to the current problems of unclear driving mechanisms for drought and flood disasters on the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau, insufficient integration of multi-source data, low accuracy of forecasting and early warning, and weak targeting of risk prevention and control measures, the research team proposed a method for identifying the evolution law and encounter characteristics of drought and flood from the perspective of water resources system, improved the coupled numerical simulation and knowledge mining model for drought and flood prediction and early warning, and constructed a technical framework for identifying the risk blocking points and adaptive regulation based on disaster chain, providing technical support for improving the prevention and control of flood and drought disasters, water resources protection, ecological restoration, and climate change response in the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau and downstream areas.