THE UTILIZATION AND PROTECTION OF THE NATURAL RESOURCES OF THE NORTHERN TIBET PLATEAU
藏北高原自然资源的利用与保护

The Northern Tibet Plateau with an area of about 600,000 km2 and an altitude of more than 4500 m above sea level is the main part of the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau. It is not inhabited in most part due to cold and dryness. So its ecosystem consisting chiefly of the alpine steppe is well-preserved and also is the largest pasture land in Tibet Autonomous Region. The areas of various kinds of usable natural grassland are suitable for the carpet-wool producing Tibet sheep and they occupy 53% of the total area of the Northern Tibet Plateau. There are a lot of wild animals and many of them are either the national first- and second-rank protected animals or the economically valuable animals. Within the plateau there are numerous-lakes and their areas occupy more than 1/4 of total area of all the lakes in China. Owing to the rich salt mine (such as glauber's salt, soda, alkeline, boron, lithium, cesium, etc.) found in the chemical residues of many salt lakes, this plateau has become an important production area and future exploitation region of mineral salt in China.Because of the weak grassland ecosystem and unreasonable utilization, now 4% of the grasslands have deteriorated, the area of sand dunes has expanded and the inhabitable range of wild animals have gradually decreased. In addition, the environment of some production areas of salt mine has been polluted and the salt mine resources are seriously destroyed. So the important strategical measures for exploiting the biological and mineral resources of the Northern Tibet Plateau should be to moderate the use of the natural grasslands, to protect the wild animals, to comprehensively develop the salt lake resources.