With a pace of about twice the observed rate of global warming, the temperature on the Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau (Earth's 'third pole') has increased by 0.2°C per decade over the past 50 years, which results in significant permafrost thawing and glacier retreat. Our review suggested that warming enhanced net primary production and soil respiration, decreased methane (CH 4 ) emissions from wetlands and increased CH 4 consumption of meadows, but might increase CH 4 emissions from lakes. Warming-induced permafrost thawing and glaciers melting would also result in substantial emission of old carbon dioxide (CO 2 ) and CH 4 . Nitrous oxide (N 2 O) emission was not stimulated by warming itself, but might be slightly enhanced by wetting. However, there are many uncertainties in such biogeochemical cycles under climate change. Human activities (e.g. grazing, land cover changes) further modified the biogeochemical cycles and amplified such uncertainties on the plateau. If the projected warming and wetting continues, the future biogeochemical cycles will be more complicated. So facing research in this field is an ongoing challenge of integrating field observations with process-based ecosystem models to predict the impacts of future climate change and human activities at various temporal and spatial scales. To reduce the uncertainties and to improve the precision of the predictions of the impacts of climate change and human activities on biogeochemical cycles, efforts should focus on conducting more field observation studies, integrating data within improved models, and developing new knowledge about coupling among carbon, nitrogen, and phosphorus biogeochemical cycles as well as about the role of microbes in these cycles.

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Whether fungal community structure depends more on historical factors or on contemporary factors is controversial. This study used culture-dependent and -independent (polymerase chain reactiondenaturing gradient gel electrophoresis (PCR-DGGE)) methods to assess the influence of historical and contemporary factors on the distributions of fungi in the wetland sediments at 10 locations along the Changjiang River and at 10 other locations in China. The culture-dependent approach detected greater species diversity (177 operational taxonomic units (OTUs)) than PCR-DGGE analysis (145 OTUs), and the species in the genera of Penicillium (relative frequency ¼ 16.8%), Fusarium (15.4%), Aspergillus (7.6%), Trichoderma (5.8%) and Talaromyces (4.2%) were dominant. On the basis of DGGE data, fungal diversity along the Changjiang River increased from upstream to downstream; altitude explained 44.8% of this variation in diversity. And based on the data from all 20 locations, the fungal communities were geographically clustered into three groups: Southern China, Northern China and the Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau. Multivariate regression tree analysis for data from the 20 locations indicated that the fungal community was influenced primarily by location (which explained 61.8% of the variation at a large scale), followed by total potassium (9.4%) and total nitrogen (3.5%) at a local scale. These results are consistent with the concept that geographic distance is the dominant factor driving variation in fungal diversity at a regional scale (1000-4000 km), whereas environmental factors (total potassium and total nitrogen) explain variation in fungal diversity at a local scale (o1000 km).

[1] To understand the seasonality of methane flux from alpine wetlands in Zoige Plateau, 30 plots were set to measure the methane emissions in the growing and nongrowing seasons in three environmental types: dry hummock (DH), Carex muliensis (CM), and Eleocharis valleculosa (EV) sites. There were clearly seasonal patterns of methane flux in different environmental types in the growing and nongrowing seasons. In the growing season, the main maximum values of methane flux were found in July and August, except for a peak value in September in CM sites. In the nongrowing season, the similar seasonal variation pattern was shared among all the three sites, in which the methane emissions increased from February to April. In the growing season, the determining factors were surface temperatures (r 2 = 0.55, P < 0.05), standing water depths (r 2 = 0.32, P < 0.01) and plant community heights (r 2 = 0.61, P < 0.01), while in the nongrowing season, ice thickness (r 2 = 0.27, P < 0.05; in CM and EV sites) was found most related to flux. In our understanding, the seasonality of methane emissions in our study areas was temperature-and-plant-growth-dependent, and the water table position was also very important to shape the temperature-and-plantgrowth-dependent seasonal variation of flux with its vigorous variations in alpine wetland ecosystems. Different environmental types within the wetland also influenced the seasonal pattern of methane flux. For an accurate estimate of the global methane source strength of alpine wetlands, the pronounced seasonal or even temporal variability in methane emission from alpine wetlands should be taken into consideration.