Ostracods as indicators for climatic and environmental changes on the Tibetan Plateau

The Tibetan Plateau is a vast and elevated plateau in Central Asia and is a source area of the most important rivers of China, India and Indochina, providing water to billions people. In this context, reliable predictions about the evolution of water supply from lacustrine and river systems are valuable to ensure freshwater availability and environmental disaster prevention, especially in time of global warming. For this proposal, organisms that provide a proxy record are particularly valuable. Analysis on ostracods from water bodies of the Tibetan Plateau and palaeoenvironmental records provide the basis to assess the environmental and societal impact of recent global change on the Tibetan Plateau. This study wants to contribute to a better understanding and thus improving the ostracods as indicators for the environmental and social impact of Quaternary and recent global change on the Tibetan Plateau. The analyses were conducted on the Taro Co and Tangra Yumco lake systems, to detect (palaeo)environmental changes and to assess their lake level changes evolution. To compare the obtained results with published records from other lakes, the considered transect was extended with information from articles regarding several water bodies present in different regions of the southern Tibetan Plateau. In the time frame after 18 ka, where more information are available, our results corresponds with only some time-shift, probably due to different dating or different exposure to the Indian Monsoon and the Westerlies although the lacking of information on tectonic and climate models will be needed to assess the different influence of the circulation patterns for the single lakes. In addition of this, the ostracod associations of the Zhada Basin (western Tibetan Plateau) were carried out and, aiming to a future use of ostracods for this less studied sector, a documentation of several unknown species was performed. A new species, Leucocytherella dangeloi was described.

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