Look at the news Knows reporter Deng Quanlun special correspondent Chen Wuyi
2020-01-18 11:53
On January 11, 2020, Beijing, the "Ancient World Under the Snowy Mountains - Exhibition of Paleontological Research Achievements on the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau" opened at the China Paleozoological Museum. This exhibition displays the fine fossils found by Chinese scientists on the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau, presenting the magnificent evolutionary history of the plateau.
In a corner of the same city, at her residence in the new town of Huairou in Beijing, Ma Lihua is busy revising a manuscript of a scientific expedition to the Tibetan Plateau. She has worked in Tibet for 27 years, and is a well-known Documentary Writer of Tibet in China, who has witnessed and recorded the scientific expedition process of the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau in China in the past 50 years.
The Qinghai-Tibet Plateau is the roof of the world, the water tower of Asia, the "third pole of the earth", an important ecological security barrier and strategic resource reserve base in China, and the birthplace of many major rivers in Asia.
In 2017, China launched the second comprehensive scientific expedition to the Tibetan Plateau. In September 2018, the first issue of research results was released in Lhasa, mainly involving the latest uplift study of the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau, the accelerated liquefaction and imbalance of the "Asian Water Tower" caused by warming and humidity, the potential risks in the context of the greening of the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau, the weather and climatic effects and atmospheric studies of the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau. In November 2019, the Institute of Tibetan Plateau Research of the Chinese Academy of Sciences completed the expedition to the lake in the no-man's land of Coco Xili.
The second Qinghai-Tibet expedition will last 5 to 10 years and is still in progress. Ma Lihua is keeping a close eye on its recent developments. "The vicissitudes of Qinghai-Tibet have excited our generation," she said, wearing a gray coat, a strong spirit, and her curly hair casually coiled on her head, "The Qinghai-Tibet Plateau scientific expedition personnel are a group of extraordinary people, and I want to write about the Qinghai-Tibet scientific expedition." ”
When Ma Lihua entered Tibet in 1976, the fourth year of the comprehensive scientific expedition of the Tibetan Plateau of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, Ma Lihua, who had just graduated from the Chinese Department of Linyi Normal University in Shandong Province (the predecessor of the College of Literature of Linyi University), was only 18 years old, and she did not expect that her literary career would intersect with the Qinghai-Tibet scientific expedition and continue to this day.
In 1997, Ma Lihua was commissioned by the Science and Technology Commission of the Tibet Autonomous Region to "erect a monument to the Qinghai-Tibet Scientific Expedition Team" and spent the next full year interviewing nearly 100 scientists and writing "The VastNess of Qinghai-Tibet.". 20 years later, in 2018, the new work "Qinghai-Tibet Radiance" was published. For Ma Lihua, Tibet, which has written history and humanities, and then writes about Tibet with science and humanities, this is "a kind of personal completion, and it is also a kind of accounting and return to Qinghai-Tibet."
At this time, the scientific investigation of the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau also evolved from a blank-filling regional investigation to a cause that attracted the attention of the international geological community. Liu Dongsheng, a senior academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and winner of the national highest science and technology award, said: "Qinghai-Tibet research is explaining the world, and global research has enriched Qinghai-Tibet research at the same time. ”
"A history of natural evolution, a history of scientific exploration, progressing on the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau, can be called an epic grand narrative." Ma Lihua said that as a writer, she is very honored and fateful to be able to follow up, record and witness the great cause of the Qinghai-Tibet scientific expedition for decades.
Origins: Filling the gap in China's scientific expeditions
In 1973, the Comprehensive Expedition Team of the Tibetan Plateau of the Chinese Academy of Sciences was established, which opened the prelude to a large-scale comprehensive scientific expedition to the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau. This is the first comprehensive and systematic scientific investigation of the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau in human history.
When Sun Honglie began to form a scientific expedition team at the end of 1972, he was still only the vice captain of the business team, but he held "real power" and was responsible for selecting team members. "At that time, the first batch of Qinghai-Tibet scientific expedition team members were only more than 40 people, and the torch was passed on, and later more than 40 academicians were produced." This made Ma Lihua, who had done in-depth interviews with them, very emotional: "This group is so good, it has been persevering, and it is the first phalanx in the field of earth science research." ”
Before the founding of New China, scientific research on the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau was almost blank, and only a very small number of foreign explorers and missionaries had visited the plateau and collected some sporadic data. Sun Honglie, a soil geography and land resources scientist who later became an academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, organized and led the first Qinghai-Tibet scientific expedition from 1973 to 1992, serving as the leader of the expedition team.
Sun Honglie was born in Beijing in 1932 in Puyang, Henan Province, the son of Sun Jianchu, the "father of PetroChina". In 1937, the Anti-Japanese War broke out, and the family moved to Nanjing. My father went to Yumen to look for oil, and before leaving, he entrusted his colleagues and friends from the Geological Survey Institute to take care of his family. Chen Enfeng, Ma Rongzhi, Xiong Yi, Li Lianjie, Liu Haipeng, etc., who lived in the same hospital at that time, were basically experts in the Soil Research Office of the Geological Survey Institute, and later they all became everyone.
Sun Honglie, who wanted to be on par with his father, was later admitted to the Department of Soil Agrochemistry of Beijing Agricultural University (now China Agricultural University) under the tutelage of Professor Li Lianjie. In 1961, Sun Honglie went to Tibet for the first time, when the postgraduate study stage was over, he had just been transferred to the Comprehensive Examination Committee of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, and the appointment was issued at the same time: to participate in the Tibet Comprehensive Science Expedition and serve as the academic secretary. He traveled along the Qinghai-Tibet Highway from north to south, all the way to Yadong County on the southern slope of the Himalayas.
After returning from the inspection, Zhu Kezhen, then vice president of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and director of the Comprehensive Examination Committee, listened to his report and took detailed notes while paying attention to basic data such as altitude, temperature and precipitation, natural conditions and distribution laws, as well as snow lines, forest lines, lakes, soil, and vegetation changes. Unfortunately, at that time, it was a period of national economic difficulties, and the current Tibet scientific expedition had to be suspended halfway. He was then devastated during the turbulent years, leaving the farm and business stalled for several years.
In 1973, when the Qinghai-Tibet expedition team finally embarked on the journey, there were only more than 40 people. Team members from a number of research institutes of the Chinese Academy of Sciences rushed to Chengdu from all over the country to assemble, and then took a mixed "Liberation" brand truck all the way west along the Sichuan-Tibet Line. "At that time, the conditions were difficult, the funds were very small, and during the field expedition, it was put in bags for migrant workers to carry, and used as pillows at night."
At that time, Ma Lihua was still deeply impressed by a passage circulating, "From a distance it looks like a refugee, up close it looks like a person who wants a meal, and if you look closely, it turns out to be the Chinese Academy of Sciences." 46 years ago, the 318 National Highway, the road surface has not yet hardened, erlang Mountain, Queershan tunnel has not yet been opened, the road is obstructed and dangerous. The convoy left the national highway in Basu County, Tibet, and descended along the south of Ranwu Lake, over mount Demula, and looked at the corner, "the members of the wind and dust servants cheered and rejoiced, and then they all went forward and threw themselves in."
The reason why Chayu County on the southeastern border of Tibet was chosen as the first stop of this trip was because this area was included in the inspection plan of the Chinese Academy of Sciences more than ten years ago but could not be completed, and because at the end of the "Cultural Revolution" turmoil, basic scientific research had just been restored, and it was cautious and tentative, so that in the 20-year scientific expedition of the Qinghai-Tibet team, the scale of the first year of dispatch was the smallest, and it was low-key to quiet.
Starting from Chayu, this year's expedition footprints have expanded to the counties of Bomi, Nyingchi, Milin and Metuo in southeast Tibet, and the inside and outside of the Brahmaputra Grand Canyon in a broad sense. In late autumn, when the team is closed, the team engaged in the investigation of hydraulic resources goes deep into the Grand Canyon to investigate along the river until the middle of winter.
The success of the first battle is not only full of harvest for all majors, but also the support and expectations of the local government, including the military. In the second and third years, the field team was increased and the scope of investigation was expanded. By the fourth year, 1976, the scale had reached its maximum— divided into four detachments, Ali, Qamdo, Nagqu, and Northern Tibet, which had traveled almost all over Tibet.
Sun Honglie especially cherished this opportunity to investigate, from planning the layout to professional overall planning, all of them did their best, the harsh natural environment, the hardship of living conditions, all of which are not a problem. The professional structure of the members of the expedition team is also more abundant, and it is not limited to the research institutes under the Chinese Academy of Sciences, but also from many universities and local scientific research institutions, production units, plus indoor workers and county assistants, no less than a thousand people.
The old Tibetans all praised the old captain Sun Honglie, saying that this first person in Qinghai-Tibet scientific research was the cohesion of this cause. Of course, the humble Sun Honglie only said, "Because of the charm of the cause and the charm of the plateau, it is the internal driving force of the Qinghai-Tibet study that condenses an excellent group of people who dedicate themselves to the cause." ”
Taking 1973 as the node, previously known as the first stage of the New China Qinghai-Tibet Scientific Expedition, marked by the establishment of the Qinghai-Tibet Scientific Expedition Team of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, in the second stage (1973-1992), there was less temporary and randomness, so it became an establishment and standardization, and it was no longer a stopgap measure, so it was done for 20 years.
By the 1990s, nature had transitioned to the third stage, marked by the "Climbing Plan" Qinghai-Tibet Project initiated by Academician Sun Honglie in 1992 and as chief scientist, and the foundation for a multidisciplinary and comprehensive Qinghai-Tibet research undertaking had been firmly established. He presided over the "Eighth Five-Year Plan" and "Ninth Five-Year Plan" National Climbing Plan Projects "Research on the Formation and Evolution, Environmental Change and Ecosystem of the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau" and "Environmental Change and Regional Sustainable Development of the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau", which brought the research of the Tibetan Plateau into a new stage.
"The road, the wider it goes; the more people, the more they gather. It seems inconceivable, but in fact, it is natural: the elements of career success are already in place - macro-forward decision-making power, unswerving execution, stable backbone team, and a good captain. Ma Lihua looked back at the scientific research on the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau along the way, and it was indeed epic.
Results: Encyclopedia of the Tibetan Plateau
At the end of the eight-year-long scientific expedition in Tibet, the peak moment was ushered in - the "Qinghai-Tibet Plateau Scientific Seminar" was held in Beijing in May 1980 - as the first international conference on Qinghai-Tibet studies, nearly 100 scientists from 18 countries and more than 300 Chinese scientists attended the meeting, and conducted extremely warm exchanges and discussions on common topics.
At this time, shortly after the dust of a "geological revolution" in the international scientific community was settled, the new theory of "plate tectonics" was recognized, thus replacing the classical geological theory. This international symposium just provided an optimal display platform, which surprised scholars from all over the world.
Chang Chengfa, then a researcher at the Institute of Geology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, preliminarily explained the principle of the formation and evolution of the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau with the theory of plate tectonics, and for the first time proposed the "phased splicing theory of multi-geotelian bodies" - it is believed that the formation of the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau is formed by the movement and collision of multiple blocks (land) and several historical stages.
The proposal of this theory is to apply the mechanism of ocean formation process to the formation of land and plates, which is the first specific application in the uplift of the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau, so it has been highly valued by scholars from all over the world. Professor Gansel, an expert in geological structure known as the "Himalayan Master" and the author of "Geology of the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau", said excitedly: Chang's work is very solid, and he uses an empirical idea to explain the plateau uplift very well, and clearly describes the evolution process of plateau structure.
After this, China and France, China and britain, China and the United States and other countries cooperated in geological investigation, after many demonstrations, geological tectonics at home and abroad unanimously confirmed the establishment of the "multi-geomorphological phased splicing theory" and recognized that it "developed the plate tectonic theory". Now people commonly call it "changing plate" refers to this contribution. During the qinghai-Tibet expedition in Tibet, the Qinghai-Tibet scientific expedition team used the comprehensive advantages of multiple disciplines to verify it with the professional evidence obtained by each of them.
At that time, there were warm exchanges at the meeting and frequent interaction at the end of the meeting, and the international seminar inadvertently became a turning point: since then, Qinghai-Tibet studies have been open to the world, and international cooperation has become the norm.
As Academician Liu Dongsheng said in 2005: "This undertaking has passed through the pioneering stage of Sven Hedin and Kington Ward in the time tunnel, the scientific discovery stage of the new Chinese mountaineering scientific expedition and comprehensive investigation, from the stage of special topic research to the deepening stage of rational understanding, and now it has entered the stage of 'Qinghai-Tibet Plateau Research in the Postmodern Period'." Tibetan studies are explaining the world, and global research is enriching Tibetan studies. ”
Academician Sun Honglie wrote in the preface to the book "The Light of Qinghai-Tibet": From 1973 to 1980, the Qinghai-Tibet scientific expedition team successively organized dozens of units, more than 40 majors, and more than 770 people to participate in the inspection and research work. The expedition area ranges from the Himalayas to the no-man's land in northern Tibet, from the Hengduan Mountains to the Ali Plateau, and the footprints of the expedition team members are almost all over the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau. They overcame all kinds of hardships and hardships and obtained tens of thousands of first-hand scientific materials.
The first Qinghai-Tibet scientific expedition has achieved remarkable results: a number of snake greenstone belts, Himalayan tropical, three-toed horse fauna fossils, dinosaur fossils, salt deposits and oil and gas displays were discovered; the strong heating effect of the Everest flag cloud and the ground of Mount Everest was observed, and the glacier wind was observed; wild barley and wild wheat, 7 new plant genera, more than 300 new plant species, as well as 20 new insect genera and more than 400 new insect species were discovered.
1976 was a bumper year for the great scientific discoveries in Tibet. After 5 years of field work and nearly 4 years of indoor summary, the final results are first reflected in the 36 41-part of the "Qinghai-Tibet Plateau Comprehensive Scientific Investigation Series" (Tibet part) successively launched by the Science Publishing House, and the publication of the series of books far exceeds the original intention of finding out the "family background", and on the basis of filling the gap in the data, an unprecedented set of Tibetan natural science encyclopedias has been dedicated.
In the past half century or so, there have been two "revolutions" in the international geological community, and in the "geological revolution" represented by plate tectonic theory in the 1960s and 1970s, Chinese scientists were still followers.
In the 1980s and 1990s, when the "Earth System Science" concept was based on the concept of "the earth as a whole", the Chinese scientific community was already a participant and served as the vanguard of the "International Geosphere-Biosphere Program" (that is, "global change research").
"When the Qinghai-Tibet expedition team went out in 1973, there were only more than 40 people at the beginning, each with a specialty." Ma Lihua's follow-up research process of the Tibetan scientific expedition found that at present, each major has multiple teams doing it, each discipline is subdivided into several branches, and the fixed-point and semi-fixed-point observation and research of various disciplines has been rolled out on the plateau, replacing the previous route-type investigation.
In the more than 10 years since 1980, the Qinghai-Tibet scientific expedition team has successively organized and carried out comprehensive scientific expeditions in the Hengduan Mountains, the Nanga Bawa Peak Area, the Karakoram-Kunlun Mountains Region, and the Coco Xili Area, and has compiled and published 34 monographs, two collections of papers, and a "Atlas of the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau."
The Tibetans regard the expedition team as their own contingent and commemorate it for a long time with a feeling of admiration -- today's "China Tongjian Tibet Volume" and "General History of Tibet" and "History of Science and Technology in Tibet" and other historical records have all been thickly inked on the Qinghai-Tibet team, together with the scientific expeditions since New China, so that they will always stay in the annals of history; the Tibet Autonomous Region Government has changed from one session to another, but the Autonomous Region Development Advisory Body has always reserved seats for Academician Sun Honglie, the veteran captain; in the places where the Qinghai-Tibet scientific expedition team members have walked, the migrant workers of that year are still telling the story of the Qinghai-Tibet Team. In the descendants of migrant workers, it gradually became a legend.
What is particularly gratifying to Sun Honglie is that since the establishment of the Qinghai-Tibet scientific expedition team, a large number of talents with scientific dedication have been created and united, including veteran scientists represented by more than 40 academicians of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and the Chinese Academy of Sciences, and a large number of young and middle-aged scientists who are active in the front line of scientific investigation on the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau.
"In the cause of Qinghai-Tibet research, there are outstanding performances in both basic scientific research, applied scientific research and practice." In Ma Lihua's view, this has also promoted the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau, the third pole of the earth, to become the focus and arena of international geoscience, and is recognized as the most ideal laboratory for scientific research in the Earth system.
Intersection: Qinghai-Tibet Studies
The intersection of Ma Lihua and the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau expedition coincided with the year she entered Tibet in 1976. At that time, it was the fourth year of the comprehensive scientific expedition of the Qinghai-Tibet Scientific Expedition Team in Tibet - it was also the last year of concentrated field operations, and a total of no less than a thousand scientific expedition personnel, local participants and indoor staff were dispatched, which was the largest, most extensive and most fruitful year in the past.
Ma Lihua, a graduate of the Chinese department, said that she "did not have any special literary ideals" at that time, but for most of the 27 years of working and living in Tibet, she had the most contact with literature. I never imagined that one day I would go even further— intersecting with the natural sciences.
At this time, the Qinghai-Tibet scientific expedition team was working on the scientific expedition activities of finding out the family's background, filling in the gaps, and making qualitative descriptions, which triggered the "blowout" of scientific discoveries for many years. The strong response to the public level through media reports and popular science works far exceeded the expectations of the expedition team.
As a member of the audience, Ma Lihua was also present, "those years were no less than a scientific enlightenment movement, and a series of new knowledge and new ideas also hit the original ideological vision like a blowout." Ma Lihua, who was transferred to Tibet Literature in 1981 as an editor, participated and witnessed the germination and prosperity of literature in a new period, and also saw how scientific research results were quickly transformed into literary resources. "At that time, I received a lot of manuscripts, all of which were poems written with the results of scientific expeditions as resources and materials. I still remember the sentence: 'Tibet was the sea at that time, and the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau rose from the bottom of the sea'. ”
The process of the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau from the sea to the plateau is a very magnificent chapter in the history of natural evolution, which gives literary youth inspiration to create. Specific to Ma Lihua personally, at that time, he wrote "Tibet is in the Age of Discovery" and also wrote poetry - "From Dangqiong Lake to Dangja Lake, it is nearly forty kilometers, and the history has gone through millions of years, and I only spent sixty minutes."
The Tibet Autonomous Region's more than 1.2 million square kilometers of large plateau has been widely "scanned", and in the next four years, it has entered the indoor research and writing stage - the first time in history to establish a natural science archive for Tibet can be described as a huge project, and the report card handed over is quite impressive: "Qinghai-Tibet Plateau Scientific Investigation Series" (Tibet part) 1 set of 36 books and 41 volumes of more than 23 million words, which have been launched by science publishing houses.
At the same time, the earliest batch of popular science books came out around 1980, such as "Unveiling the Mystery of the Roof of the World", "Expedition on the Tibetan Plateau" and other survey notes containing professional knowledge and scientific discoveries, attracting more readers than academic monographs.
In 1992, the mission of the Qinghai-Tibet Scientific Expedition Team was completed, marked by the "Karakoram Mountain-Kunlun Mountain International Symposium" held in Kashgar, Xinjiang, which drew a successful conclusion to the first Qinghai-Tibet scientific expedition. The "number" can be canceled, and the cause continues. When the veteran members of the Qinghai-Tibet scientific expedition team said goodbye in Kashgar, many people reunited under the banner of Qinghai-Tibet research, followed by the old team leader - the Qinghai-Tibet Project (1992-1997), the "Eighth Five-Year Plan" Climbing Plan for Major National Basic Scientific Research, which was immediately launched, was headed by Academician Sun Honglie, the veteran leader.
The Eighth Five-Year Plan was followed by the Ninth Five-Year Plan, after which the climbing plan was merged into the first phase of the "973" project (1999-2003), a key basic research project of the state redeployment. The chief scientist was Academician Zheng Du, executive deputy captain of the Qinghai-Tibet scientific expedition team that year.
Another five years later, a new round of the "973" project (2003-2007) was launched - the chief scientist was Academician Yao Tandong, who participated in the Qinghai-Tibet scientific expedition team as a student and had made outstanding contributions to ice core research at this time.
"Since then, the Qinghai-Tibet research has been uninterrupted and has ascended step by step, and the super team engaged in Qinghai-Tibet research has been particularly consistent along the way, saying that the banner of the Qinghai-Tibet team has not fallen, and the Qinghai-Tibet spirit has been passed down from generation to generation, which is how it came." Ma Lihua said.
Academician Liu Dongsheng once summarized the work paradigm and the "Qinghai-Tibet effect" of the Qinghai-Tibet scientific expedition research: it is the cohesion effect of the team to tackle tough problems and explore nature, the amplification effect of interdisciplinarity and mutual penetration, the catalytic effect of the emergence of science stars and the emergence of talents, and the social effect of popularizing science and promoting development. Academician Zheng Du also wrote a monograph on this purpose, summarizing it as the "Qinghai-Tibet Spirit".
In this way, scientists from several fields came to the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau to conduct scientific research, and Ma Lihua, who was an editor at the time, received submissions from others while carrying out her own literary creations - the two lines seemed to be parallel, when did they intersect?
It was 1997 – and Ma Lihua was in direct contact with the cause at a time when the past was being followed by the past and the old and the new. At that time, the Tibet Autonomous Region Science and Technology Commission (now the Science and Technology Department of the Tibet Autonomous Region) gave her a task to erect a monument to the Qinghai-Tibet scientific expedition team. She spent the whole year of 1998 interviewing nearly 100 scientists and writing "Qinghai-Tibet Vastness".
With this as a reference, Ma Lihua saw at a glance - the change in the form of work that was later summarized as "from the deepening stage of thematic research to rational understanding" - changed the running surface to a fixed point, and changed the qualitative to quantitative.
How can Qinghai-Tibet research start from a regional, intermittent, and scientific gap-filling scientific expedition that has attracted the attention of the international geological community today, and is expected to play a leading role in international earth system scientific research, so as to reach the level of world leadership?
"This has both endogenous driving force and multi-faceted 'god assists', so that small scientific expedition team 'walked' into today's thousands of troops." In Ma Lihua's view, the endogenous driving force refers to the innate advantages of the earth's scientific research resources possessed by the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau, with its own aura, and also refers to the perseverance of researchers and their own energy. Multi-party "god assists" are substantially promoted from many aspects, both domestic and international.
Records: From "Qinghai-Tibet Vastness" to "Qinghai-Tibet Light"
Ma Lihua then became a recorder. Talking about the history and recent developments of the Qinghai-Tibet scientific expedition over the past few decades, in the "geological revolution" represented by plate tectonic theory in the 1960s and 1970s, Chinese scientists were still followers, and only applied plate theory to Qinghai-Tibet research.
But in the 1980s and 1990s, during the concept of "Earth System Science" based on the idea that the earth is one, Chinese scientists were already participants in the "International Geosphere-Biosphere Project" aimed at studying global change. Since the 1990s, there have been new developments and results in the Qinghai-Tibet scientific expedition, and a new generation of scientists has inherited the past, making it necessary for her to put pen to paper again and record it again.
In the 1980s and 1990s, the international geoscience community made a major leap forward in the way of thought, which was no less important than the "geoscience revolution" of that year - that is, based on the cognition that "the earth is a whole", and the concept of "earth system science" came out.
In action, the International Geological Organization has successively launched the "International Geosphere-Biosphere Project", that is, the "Study of Global Change", a series of topics, which are actually assigned to countries around the world.
Different from the performance of the "geological revolution" period in that year, in the process of this ideological revolution, the Chinese scientific community is no longer a close echo, but participates in it - experts represented by atmospheric physicist Academician Ye Duzheng began to participate in the discussion from the gestation stage, and the first to establish the International Geosphere-Biosphere Program China Committee, chaired by the founder of the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau meteorology.
Qinghai-Tibet research has included all disciplines of the Earth system, and for this super international scientific program, the Chinese scientific community has actively practiced it, and the Qinghai-Tibet research project has taken the lead in setting an example. "Past global change" is an important part of the International Geosphere-Biosphere Programme, so environmental change is first on the agenda.
As the best medium for obtaining paleoenvironmental information, lake cores and ice cores are also carried out at the same time as natural profiles – these two disciplines stand out from traditional limnology and traditional glaciology respectively, reflecting the high-end new means of Qinghai-Tibet research in the new era.
"Every year, I have to attend the annual meeting of the China Tibetan Plateau Research Association, and scientists in various fields must talk about the scientific research results of this year." For Ma Lihua, the completion of "Qinghai-Tibet Vastness" is not the end, for 20 years, she has been influenced by the scientific research of the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau and accepted the illumination of the "light" of this scientific expedition.
In 2003, the Institute of Tibetan Plateau Research of the Chinese Academy of Sciences was established, and the operation mode of "one institute and three departments" in Beijing, Lhasa and Kunming was implemented, and the scientific expedition on the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau was facing new opportunities and challenges. Ma Lihua was also exposed to many new scientific research achievements and papers on the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau, and she had the idea: to start again and interview again.
"The first Qinghai-Tibet scientific expedition has achieved remarkable results, but scientists have not stagnated, and new discoveries and results have been made." Ma Lihua saw that the career of the Qinghai-Tibet scientific expedition was passed on from generation to generation, and there were successors. "I'm going to do another interview and write another book to show the cause of their Qinghai-Tibet expedition team and their continuation."
In 2012, Ma Lihua began formal interviews. "From the previous "Qinghai-Tibet Cang" to the current writing of "Qinghai-Tibet Light", the way of working has changed, because the times have changed." Twenty-two years ago, in 1997, in order to interview scientists, Ma Lihua traveled to Beijing, Lanzhou, Nanjing, Tibet and other places to communicate with scientists face-to-face. This time, it's more about the case study, "at home, call, send WeChat, email, contact them." I asked a lot of written questions, asked them to answer or provide me with relevant information, and the desk work was very much done. ”
Academician Yao Tandong, who wrote the preface to "The Light of Qinghai-Tibet," recalled that when Ma Lihua went to Lanzhou to write "Qinghai-Tibet Cangmao" and went directly to her home, "At that time, I was eating while answering her questions."
Ma Lihua said that the difference between the two interviews is that in the first interview, the study of the Tibetan Plateau was mainly based on field work, "which is a very vivid story." "The second interview changed, when the study of the Tibetan Plateau introduced a lot of new research methods, far more than originally planned for many reasons - first of all, the rapid progress of the discipline, from the phenomenon into the muscle and even the study of the mechanism, for cross-border writing of liberal arts people is both difficult and difficult.
"It's all new knowledge that hasn't been exposed to, only hard scalp, learning from scratch." One of the problems and new areas that Ma Lihua encountered was atmospheric physics. "I found Academician Wu Guoxiong, an authority on atmospheric physics, and I was embarrassed to ask people for advice, so I asked which student had a better personality, preferably a woman." In fact, the teacher who arranged for one-on-one teaching is also a doctoral supervisor. "After a morning of talking, it was more difficult than supervising your own doctoral students, but it was a good introduction."
In addition to atmospheric physics, there is also limnology. "I think it's very interesting for the little teacher to teach the old students." In addition to staying at home to read a large number of papers, it is also essential to concentrate on desk work and go out to interview. Academician Yao Tandong mentioned in the preface to "The Light of Qinghai-Tibet", "She has also traveled several times to interview in other places, and for at least three summers she has been 'stationed' at the Qinghai-Tibet Institute in Lhasa, visiting all the researchers she can meet from all over the world, whether old or young, no matter what discipline it is, and talking anytime and anywhere." ”
Ma Lihua, who had just begun to interview in 2012, followed the Qinghai-Tibet scientific expedition team to Ali. In 2015, he followed Sun Honglie, Yao Tandong and Qin Dahe to the Brahmaputra Grand Canyon. "In the first year of the first Qinghai-Tibet scientific expedition, the target was southeast Tibet. Mr. Sun Honglie has returned to the Grand Canyon after 42 years, which is of great commemorative significance. ”
At the end of the book "The Light of Qinghai-Tibet", Ma Lihua dedicated "Return to the Grand Canyon" a scene back to the scene at that time: There was a moment when I suddenly realized that the narrow space was actually a high-concentration epitome of the Qinghai-Tibet cause for half a century, which was very symbolic - two representative figures, one was the old captain of the Qinghai-Tibet team, the other was the current chief scientist of the Qinghai-Tibet Research, like the succession of time and space, the relay before and after the torch, and the current me, the recorder of this process - the space is small and the tension is infinite. This thought does not go away, and every time I think of this, my mood is inevitably excited for a while.
Benefit: A testimony to the light of science
"I position the book 'The Light of Qinghai-Tibet' as a tribute to the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau, a tribute to the explorers of the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau." Ma Lihua said that the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau, as a research object, has attracted generations of scientists to come forward and study it, and these explorers are also worthy of praise. "Following up on a cause, the final follow-up is still people, generation after generation of noble and pure people with real talent and practical learning and dedication."
She had the privilege of witnessing the booming scientific research of Qinghai-Tibet in the past era. Fortunately, liu dongsheng and Shi Yafeng, who were the soul figures of Qinghai-Tibet scientific research at that time, were still alive and could listen to the teachings in person. The old gentlemen are really wonderful, literary and eloquent. ”
As early as 1964, these two masters who opened up China's loess research and glacier research jointly presided over the mountaineering expedition of XishaBang Mafeng, providing a model for field work for the scientific expedition in the plateau area, and he spent his life as a guide to promote the research cause of the Qinghai-Tibet scientific expedition all the way forward.
In 1990, the China Tibetan Plateau Research Association was established, and Liu Dongsheng served as the chairman. In 2003, the Institute of Tibetan Plateau Research of the Chinese Academy of Sciences was established, and he served as the director of the academic committee of the institute – the creation of these two institutional platforms became a milestone event in Qinghai-Tibet research. The significance of this for the development of the Qinghai-Tibet scientific expedition is not overestimated in Ma Lihua's view.
In addition, the degree of popularization of scientific knowledge is unprecedented - a series of terms that have now become common sense and were new to knowledge have spread rapidly: the "plate collision", "off-sea into land" and "plateau uplift" reflecting the vicissitudes of great changes, and the "dinosaur era" and "three-toed horse era" that reflect environmental changes.
"The description of the mountains and rivers is no longer based on legends alone, but has a reference for academic discourse." Ma Lihua specifically pointed out the big concept in the new term - with the construction of nature reserves and the awareness of ecological protection, etc., there are glaciers, permafrost, geothermal and the like, of which geothermal phenomena and geothermal development are almost synchronously rooted in the hearts of the people.
At that time, Lhasa was suffering from a lack of electricity, and whenever the water and electricity were shut down in the dry season in the middle of winter, even the lighting electricity was difficult to guarantee. When it was learned from the Qinghai-Tibet scientific expedition that Tibet's geothermal reserves were considerable and could be used to generate electricity, the Tibet Autonomous Region Government did not delay for a moment and immediately made a plan to build the Yangbajing Geothermal Power Station.
In 1977, Tibet's first geothermal power generation test unit began to supply power to Lhasa urban area, although the power in the trial operation stage is limited, but it has seen the great potential for future development, but also left a mark in the history of new energy development in the world - creating an international precedent for the use of medium and low temperature geothermal power generation.
"As an individual, with a simple sense of gratitude, it represents Qinghai-Tibet and is a reward for thanksgiving." In 1998, Ma Lihua traveled to Beijing, Nanjing, and Lanzhou to visit dozens of veteran team members who had long participated in the front-line scientific expeditions on the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau. "Every time I see the old gentlemen with white sideburns and white spirits laughing and talking about the past, it is like the scene is reproduced, and the difficult and magnificent years are coming to the face - the sentiments of this heroic group make me feel emotional and the mountains are uplifted."
Looking back at the history of the Qinghai-Tibet scientific expedition, Ma Lihua sighed that the journey along the way was gradual, but also accelerated forward, a large leap forward, and sometimes saw "overtaking in curves". "The sharp turning point at every turn has benefited from the great era of reform and opening up, the strength of the whole country and the efforts of the group of scientists."
"Between 2012 and 2017, I conducted a new round of interviews with the Qinghai-Tibet research team. This time it was spontaneous, a call from the heart. Ma Lihua's writing impulse is also related to the expansion of Qinghai-Tibet research - including the study of the evolutionary history of the Yellow River and the Yangtze River, the study of loess as a medium for reconstructing paleoclimate and environmental change, and the new contents of environmental archaeology, together with the ice core and lake core research that have long been accomplished, which are all part of the various topics of the Qinghai-Tibet Project.
Compared with the "high poles" of the north and south poles of the earth, the "third pole" is surrounded by dense human activities, which has irreplaceable significance in the study of global change, and now a new situation of "three poles" linkage with antarctic and Arctic research has been formed, which means that the overall Qinghai-Tibet research has entered the forefront of international geoscience.
Among the various innovative mechanisms established to ensure the implementation of this international plan, there is a long-term mechanism of the "Third Pole" youth talent training program, which impressed Ma Lihua: recruiting international students from neighboring countries. Since Academician Yao Tandong recruited the first Nepalese doctoral student in 2009, the enrollment has been expanded year by year, and there have been more than 100 international students from nearly 20 countries.
In August 2017, after more than 40 years, China launched the second Qinghai-Tibet scientific expedition. Academician Yao Tandong, chief scientist of the second Qinghai-Tibet scientific expedition, compared the two Qinghai-Tibet scientific expeditions: "The first time is to discover, and this time it is to see the changes. ”
The changes are clearly visible in the first phase of the second Qinghai-Tibet scientific expedition: while the ecosystem of the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau is improving, the potential risks increase; the imbalance of water towers in Asia, the frequent occurrence of new disasters and catastrophes such as ice avalanches; and the obvious differences in the uplift history of the Himalayas and the Ganges Mountains, resulting in new biological evolution models...
The second Qinghai-Tibet expedition will last 5 to 10 years, and is still in progress. The Qinghai-Tibet Plateau, the "third pole of the earth" and the "last pure land in the world", needs deeper exploration and better protection by human beings.
China's Qinghai-Tibet scientific expedition continues to march toward breadth and depth. Figurative figures, groups of group images come to mind, black and white images are the early scientific expedition team members, and color images are young faces active in the plateau today. What has changed over the years and the Pingchuan Plateau is the light of science and art displayed by the research cause of the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau; what has not changed is that the sunshine of the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau still shines on the vast land, and that light is also inspiring more people to carry forward the past and open up the future.
Ma Lihua sighed: "As a literary youth who has benefited from popular science, from "Qinghai-Tibet Vastness" to "Qinghai-Tibet Radiance", I am very honored and fateful to be able to follow up and record this great cause for decades. ”
Ma Lihua is still following up on the record, she said: "After all, my personal ability is limited, and I am older, I hope more people will follow." Let more people be interested, let more people spread, and pass on the beauty of the landscape, the beauty of humanities, and the beauty of science on the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau. ”
(Look at the news Knows reporter: Deng Quanlun Special reporter: Chen Wuyi Editor: Fan Yanfei)