Use of rural energy resources and eco-environmental degradation in Tibet.
Cattle dung, firewood, and crop straw have being used as survival necessities by farmers and herdsmen for thousands of years in Tibet. Until recently such biotic energy source still constitutes more than 92 per cent of total rural energy consumption due to lack of petroleum, coal and new alternative energy sources. As a result, environmental degradation such as land desertification, soil erosion, grassland degradation and soil fertility reduction is increasingly aggravated, the area of desertified land has increased 1467.5 km2 from 1991 to 1997. Degraded area of grassland has reached 2.60 x 10(7) hm2, increased by 116.1% from 1987 to 1996. To prevent further deterioration of eco-environment in Tibet great efforts should be made to make full use of ample solar energy, wind energy and other biotic energy of the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau. The solar cooking stoves and solar hothouse, expand forest area and replace existing abiotic energy sources with firewood forest should be popularized. This is an urgent task to protect the eco-environment of Tibet today.
Wei
Xing-Hu
XH
Cold and Arid Regions Environmental and Engineering Research Institute, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Lanzhou 730000, China. weixinghu1964@yahoo.com
Yang
Ping
P
Wang
Ya-Jun
YJ
Xie
Zhong-Kui
ZK
D000818:Animals; D003247:Conservation of Natural Resources; D003296:Cooking; D004784:Environmental Monitoring; D004785:Environmental Pollutants / Q000032:analysis*; D004787:Environmental Pollution / Q000517:prevention & control*; D006801:Humans; D008372:Manure; D012424:Rural Population; D012993:Solar Energy; D018609:Tibet; D014197:Trees; D014934:Wood
D004785:Environmental Pollutants; D008372:Manure