Ngoring Lake. Sanjiangyuan National Nature Reserve, Qinghai, China. 2014
Ngoring Lake. Sanjiangyuan National Nature Reserve, Qinghai, China. 2014
In the 1990s, China’s Yellow River began to dry up, and in 1997 it failed to reach the sea for several months. In an effort to address the problem, government officials launched a scheme to protect the river’s source, a region about the size of Illinois called Sanjiangyuan (“Three River Source”) in northwest Qinghai province, which is also home to the sources of the Yangtze and Mekong rivers. The Sanjiangyuan National Nature Reserve was established in 2000. Since then, Ngoring Lake, the largest of the lakes in the Reserve, has seen its water levels rising and is now larger than its historical average. Local officials claim this is proof that the government’s environmental preservation efforts have been successful, but recent research by climate scientists suggests a more worrying explanation for rising water levels: not only is climate change thought to be responsible for increased rainfall and snowfall in the area, it has also caused, by some estimates, up to a fifth of the permafrost which covers 80% of the plateau to melt.
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Ngoring Lake. Sanjiangyuan National Nature Reserve, Qinghai, China. 2014
In the 1990s, China’s Yellow River began to dry up, and in 1997 it failed to reach the sea for several months. In an effort to address the problem, government officials launched a scheme to protect the river’s source, a region about the size of Illinois called Sanjiangyuan (“Three River Source”) in northwest Qinghai province, which is also home to the sources of the Yangtze and Mekong rivers. The Sanjiangyuan National Nature Reserve was established in 2000. Since then, Ngoring Lake, the largest of the lakes in the Reserve, has seen its water levels rising and is now larger than its historical average. Local officials claim this is proof that the government’s environmental preservation efforts have been successful, but recent research by climate scientists suggests a more worrying explanation for rising water levels: not only is climate change thought to be responsible for increased rainfall and snowfall in the area, it has also caused, by some estimates, up to a fifth of the permafrost which covers 80% of the plateau to melt.