20. July 2018
The team of the International Research Training Group "Geo-ecosystems in Transition on the Tibetan Plateau (TransTiP)", funded by DFG, has reached its destination of this year’s field campaign: the research station NAMORS at Lake Nam Co on the Tibetan Plateau. Nam Co, the highest saltwater lake in the world, is the absolute focus of one team’s interest. But how do you examine a lake that is almost four times the size of Lake Constance? In order to get the coveted water and sediment samples, the team of the lake group of TransTiP, consisting of Dr. Nicole Börner, Dr. Anja Schwarz, Wengang Kang, Magnus Ole Asmussen (Institute for Geosystems and Bioindicators at the TU Braunschweig) and Jinlei Kai (Institute of Tibetan Plateau Research, (ITP) Beijing, China), had to put up with some inconveniences.
“Rubber boat rides, which can sometimes take more than ten hours, in intense sunshine followed by constant rain and sudden strong waves. Or the investigation of the tributaries of the lake, which are often only accessible via unpaved dirt tracks, sometimes even off-road. And of course, everybody needs time to adapt to the altitude of almost 5,000 meters, combined with headaches, insomnia, nausea ...
Why are we doing this anyway? Climate change is progressing faster and more rapidly on the Tibetan Plateau than anywhere else in the world. The lake responds to this, for example with higher water temperatures or shorter periods of ice cover, which in turn affect the physical conditions and ultimately the organisms in the lake. We want to examine and understand these changes in the lake. To do this, we study aquatic microorganisms, their habitats and the distribution of different species. At the same time, sediment cores from Nam Co show us how the hydrological conditions have changed during the past decades and centuries.
It is also interesting to see how the changes in the catchment area, such as melting glaciers and possibly increasing material input, are having an impact on Nam Co. This is why we are also investigating the inflows of the lake. In order to be able to achieve all of this, we are ready to take on adverse conditions, everything to explore the "Sky Lake", as the locals would say. "
Text: Dr. Anja Schwarz and Dr. Nicole Börner from Institute of Geosystems and Bioindication