PREFACE
Fields and fences now line the highway along the southern shore of Qinghai Lake. Crops of rape sway gently in the breeze, turning a resplendent yellow when in blossom. Far above, high in the Qinghai Nanshan mountains, the rich and colorful alpine pastures are the summer home of local Tibetan herders. Summer is the season of plenty, a time for sheep and yak and wildlife - not to mention the pastoralists themselves - to recover their strength. This also is the time for herders to make strategic decisions in careful preparation for the colder, darker season that always lies ahead, another winter in the cycle of seasons, a cycle of abundance and scarcity. In the autumn and winter, livestock deplete the rangeland resources as they forage and prepare for the hardest time of all, the spring season. This is not a spring of new growth, but of a longing for summer, of resources virtually exhausted, of persistent cold and barren lands. In this season, two shadows cover the land, one figurative, and the other real. In the former, summer is longed for as livestock begin to die of starvation, often leading to a despair reinforced by local perceptions of inevitability and fate. In the latter, tons of soil are blown away, literally, by the winds of spring, fertile soil that is lost forever from the recently tilled fields - yesterday's most fertile pasturelands that recently have been converted into agricultural fields. And this shadow is real, a shadow that risks growing in the light of current winds of development and change. Yet, as always, a time of plenty is just around the corner, the cycle of seasons about to begin once again. Or will it? Indeed, what exactly are the present winds of change, the driving forces behind the interconnected social, economic, and ecological changes presently taking place in the Qinghai Lake area and elsewhere on the Tibetan plateau? What do Qinghai's alpine grasslands look like today? And what can be done to protect the fragile ecological balance and biodiversity of the Tibetan plateau, a truly unique world-class natural heritage? To discuss and to answer in part these crucial questions is at the heart of this dissertation.