Out this week in the journal Science member of the UMBRELLA team, Prof. Robert Spicer, has publihed new and exciting research examining the originsn of our modern plant diversity. Many readers may even be familiar with many of these plant specieis as they are also common in many of our back gardens. An international team …
Despite Covid19 our Chinese colleagues are busy collecting plant fossils (and looking at the modern flora) in the ancient Gangdese mountains. Since the Cretaceous the Gangdese have marked the southern boundary of what is now the Tibetan Plateau. They however are not alone all the way up there, they have to share their digs sites with …
Back in the field! While we in the UK languish in lockdown our colleagues in China has returned to Tibet to start fieldwork in the western Gangdese Mountains, SW Tibet. Despite the recent resurgence of the virus in Being an UMBRELLA group from XTBG and Yunnan University recently arrived in Lhasa in preparation for this …
Understanding the orographic development of the Tibetan Plateau through time is essential to the UMBRELLA project and measuring past landscape height is core to that understanding. It is the shape and height of the land surface that interacts with the atmosphere that in turn affects climate, vegetation type and drainage patterns, all of which feedback …
The phrase ‘the uplift of the Tibetan Plateau’ permeates the scientific literature, extending even into the realms of molecular phylogeny. It implies that this enormous and almost flat-surfaced portion of Earth’s surface rose as a coherent entity, and that uplift was driven entirely by the collision and northward movement of India. In a study published …
The East Asian monsoon covers much of the largest continent on Earth leading to rain in the summer in Japan, the Koreas and lots of China. Ultimately, more than 1.5 billion people depend on the water it provides for agriculture, industry and hydroelectric power. Understanding the monsoon is essential. That is why colleagues and I …
Shortly after arriving back in China, our very own Bob Spicer was asked to speak at a Kunming primary school around the general topic of Tibet, Monsoons and Biodiversity in Asia. He was told beforehand that the children would be aged around 10 and that the talk was part of an afternoon of interesting the …
Over the last month and a half the UMBRELLA team has been in China collecting a series of new data across Guangdong, Hainan and Tibet. Arriving on the 17th April in Guangzhou the UK team met up with the Chinese team from Sun-Yat Sen University who are experts in plaeobiology and botany for a series …
The new research, co-authored by academics from Key Laboratory of Vertebrate Evolution and Human Origins, Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, University of Bristol’s School of Geographical Sciences, The Open University and Birbal Sahni Institute of Palaeosciences suggests that central Tibet must have been no higher than 2.3km with large lakes fringed with subtropical …
Some of the recent modelling work has been updated on our modelling page . Here we show an example of some of the exciting high resolution simulations of each geological stage that is being developed for the project. See high resolution animations and further details here: Model data The scope of the modelling work aims …