Progress in studies on river morphodynamics in Qinghai-Tibet Plateau

The Qinghai-Tibet Plateau is the source zone of China and Asian's large rivers, where river network well developed within the plateau. Under the superimposed impacts of plateau uplift, climate change, and human activities, the rivers may be significantly changed in the future, resulting in a series of interdisciplinary issues which are becoming a hot topic. Following our field investigations of the plateau rivers during 2007-2016, we comprehensively summarized the research progress of river morphodynamics in recent decades, such as the related geological background, the influences of the uplift, river morphological characteristics, and fluvial processes. Furthermore, we focus on effects of climate change on river morphodynamics in the middle time scale, and the local, abrupt and accelerating effects of human activities on the short time scale. Meanwhile, a new concept of alluvial river group is proposed as well as its definition, characteristics and distribution are preliminarily given, in order to promote the understanding on the formation and evolution of complex braided and meandering rivers in this new framework.