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Securing water quality of the Asian Water Tower

Water quality of the Asian Water Tower is far less studied than water quantity, but expected increases in upstream riverine chemical fluxes and lowland pollutant release could exacerbate water quality deterioration downstream. Data sharing, integrated modelling, and joint actions are needed to mitigate this problem.

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Fig. 1: Water quality and the Asian Water Tower.

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Acknowledgements

The authors acknowledge support by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (42125104 and 41761144078), and the Second Tibetan Plateau Scientific Expedition and Research (STEP) programme (2019QZKK0208). The authors are grateful to Professor Deliang Chen for valuable comments on earlier drafts.

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Correspondence to Chen Zeng.

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Zhang, F., Zeng, C., Zhang, Q. et al. Securing water quality of the Asian Water Tower. Nat Rev Earth Environ 3, 611–612 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1038/s43017-022-00347-z

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