The railway allows for Tibetan antelope migration by means of the "passages" that have been built especially for them.	The "cool tubes" that preserve the frozen earth.

The Qinghai-Tibet Railway, which provides a rail link between the formerly inaccessible autonomous region and the rest of China, began operation on July 1, 2006.

Minimizing damage to the primitive, fragile and susceptible Qinghai-Tibet Plateau ecosystem was a matter of worldwide concern throughout the railway’s construction, during which environmental investment hit a dizzy RMB 1.5 billion (US $20 million). One year later, just how effective have these environmental protection measures been?

In order to find out, from May 30 to June 1, 2007 a team of 100 domestic ecology, plant and environment experts organized by the State Environmental Protection Administration and the Ministry of Railways checked and verified issues arising from the construction and running of the railway, such as the disposal of garbage and sewage, protection of the natural landscape and permafrost, and wildlife migratory channels onsite. The group concluded that the first survey was merely preliminary, and that long-term monitoring supervision and control of environmental protection along the Qinghai-Tibet Railway should be established as soon as possible.

Clear Space under Zero Discharge

Checks started in Golmud, Qinghai Province, at 6 am, May 31, 2007.

Ten minutes after the train arrived, two sanitation workers removed its 10-hour accumulation of garbage and sewage by pumping it into six vacuum sewage tankers.

This is the first instance of “aerial” train cleaning in China. Golmud Railway Station' s 15 vacuum sewage tankers, worth RMB 4 million, are an essential aspect of environmental protection along the Qinghai-Tibet Railway; they allow it to meet the “zero discharge en route” demand which, “has provided a clean space for wildlife,” according to a zoologist in the checking and verification team.

Construction of stations in the vast unpopulated zone traversed by the Qinghai-Tibet Railway also necessitated the building of disposal facilities for the sewage and garbage they, along with the large numbers of passengers traveling to Tibet since the railway opened, generate.

The regular passenger train between Golmud and Lhasa makes no stops. In order to deal with the garbage that accumulates over this distance, each train has its own refuse collection and compression system; the garbage is subsequently disposed of either in Golmud or Lhasa. After a 10-month trial, the system has disposed of more than 60,000 tons of sewage and garbage, according to the Qinghai-Tibet Railway Company.

The Tuotuo River is the source of the Yangtze River, and the Tuotuo River Super-large Bridge is in the Yangtze River Source Nature Reserve. The 15 sewage disposal stations along the line between Golmud and Lhasa use biochemical, electrochemical and oxidization processes to dispose of sewage and prevent pollution of the Tuotuo River. Garbage and sewage emanating from the operation of the Qinghai-Tibet Railway have so far had no adverse affect on the plateau environment, but testing and verification have only just begun.

The Lhasa Railway Station Sewage Treatment Plant, which went into operation in January 2007, is the only sewage treatment plant in the Lhasa area, according to Zhu Xiaoping, deputy manager of the Yufeng Maintenance Company under the Qinghai-Tibet Railway Sideline Assets Management Center. But the millions of tourists converging in Nyingchi and Nagqu, and the garbage and sewage they generate are a continuing and crucial problem.

Running Safely on Permafrost

As the earth’s “third pole,” the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau is an indicator and amplifier of global warming, which experts regard as the biggest menace to the plateau's permafrost.

Regularly placed 15cm diameter “cool tubes,” standing two meters above the earth surface and extending five meters below, line the rail route through the narrow Kunlun Mountain pass from Golmud that traverses Yuzhu Peak. They are filled with a mixture of gases that absorbs heat in the earth that is generated by the train’s passage, liquefy, and run down through the tubes to below ground lvel. This process is designed to control subterranean temperatures and preserve the frozen earth, or tundra, in the region.

“The heat-absorbing tube freeze function occurs in the same way as natural phenomenon and requires no power,” explains Tong Changjiang, expert at the Chinese Academy of Sciences Cold and Arid Regions Environmental and Engineering Research Institute, which incorporates a state key frozen soil-engineering laboratory. This scientific achievement is crucial to permafrost protection.

Cool tubes work on the basic physics principle of expanding under heat and contracting in the cold. A liquid, such as ethylamine, freon or nitrogen, is poured into the tube which, after its insertion into the ground, evaporates into the condenser as the underground temperature rises. Gas also turns to liquid and flows to the tubes' lower extremities in response to arctic winds above ground. These tubes are natural “perpetual motion” freezers, that periodically emit heat from the frozen earth.

Scientific research personnel have also installed ground temperature devices of various heights around the cool tubes that accurately measure the ground temperature. “A puff of hot air shoots out of the tube when the cap is opened,” states one staff member of the Qinghai-Tibet Railway Company engineering department that checks and verifies frozen earth in the Qingshuihe Frozen Earth Section, at an altitude of 4,490 m. “Heat discharge is an aspect of the tube’s function.”

As the high ice-content frozen earth has formed over years, the annual difference in temperature of the Qingshuihe area is over 50?. At this high-risk zone, the “Bridge for Road” application, a viaduct through a permafrost layer that forms layers within the solid earth, acting as paving for the rails on the bridge and avoiding rail impact on the frozen earth , also comes into play, in addition to the cooling tube technology.

Upon being asked whether or not these measures effectively protect frozen earth, Tong Changjiang’s opinion, based on monitoring, is that the railway does not appear to have had any adverse effects on the frozen earth.

Grass Planting Experiment

The Qinghai-Tibet Plateau has the most abundant plant and animal species in China. But as they grow within one of the world’s most fragile ecosystems they are vulnerable to severe cold, low oxygen, infertile land and changeable weather that can seriously affect their survival.

The Qinghai-Tibet Railway environmental evaluation report states that in the section along the railway where annual average precipitation is more than 200 mm, environmental ill effects on numbers of animal species require 30 years to recover, while that of vegetation coverage needs even longer. Moderate soil damage requires at least 45 years to recovery, while severely damaged soil needs more than 60 years.

How, then, can railway construction avoid avoid damaging plateau vegetation? This is what Chinese scientific research personnel and railway engineers are trying to determine through experiments with vegetation transplants and planting of artificial grass 4,500 meters above sea level or higher on the plateau.

This experiment, whereby arctic-resistant vegetation is planted on the slopes of the railbed, cost a cool RMB 7 million in scientific research, and RMB 600 million in engineering expenses over a four-year period.

“The grass seeds planted are germinating satisfactorily,” is Liang Xuegong, Environmental Engineering Evaluation Center of the State Environmental Protection Administration expert’s conclusion after a one-year field inspection. “The vegetation on the sections north of Tanggula Mountain Pass recovers naturally, through the growth of local plants, while the section south of Tanggula Mountain Pass relies on artificial recovery, through the growth of replanted vegetation.”

The checking and verification situation at the end of May endorsed this finding. The railway from Golmud to Lhasa features no desolate construction sites full of earth mounds and craters, but light green grass on slopes of the roadbed. The mound of earth formed from the construction of Fenghuoshan Tunnel has also turned green, complementing the surrounding terrain.

Wildlife Migratory Channels

Wildlife conservation is another source of concern triggered by the operation of the Qinghai-Tibet Railway. This is understandable, in view of the train’s passage through Hoh Xil, which is one of the Tibetan antelope migratory routes.

The solution has been to build 33 “passages” along the railway, over the gentle roadbed slopes, under bridges and over tunnels. The length of passages built amounts to 59.8 km -- 5.1 percent of the total length of the railway.

Wu Xiaomin of the Northwest Institute of Endangered Zoological Species, the State Forestry Administration, and experts from the Institute of Zoology, the Chinese Academy of Sciences have been conducting annual June to August on-the-spot inspections since 2003 in order to evaluate the effect of these passages. Their findings are that these paths have enabled Tibetan antelopes to continue their normal migrations, and that they are becoming accustomed to the railway.

Though the environmental protection inspection is complete, experts believe that it is just the beginning of ecosystem protection along the Qinghai-Tibet Railway. More important, long-term monitoring and controlling systems need to be established as soon as possible in order more effectively to protect the plateau environment.