Yadong to Golmud Transect Qinghai - Tibet Plateau, China

Published by the American Geophysical Union as part of the Global Geoscience Transects Series, Volume 3.The Global Geoscience Transects Project (GGT) is an ambitious international effort that draws together geoscientists in a variety of disciplines to produce the best possible portrayal of the composition and structure of the Earth's crust.

Since its inception in 1985, GGT has encouraged geoscientists in all countries of the world to compile cross sections of the Earth up to a few thousands of kilometers in length and drawn to the base of the crust using all available geological, geophysical, and geochemical information.

Transects are drawn to common scales and formats so that the Earth's crust in different parts of the world can be directly comparedGGT was conceived by the Inter-Union Commission on the Lithosphere (ICL), a "child" of the International Union of Geological Sciences and the International Union of Geodesy and Geophysics (IUGG), at the IASPEI conference in Tokyo in August 1985.

Project coordinators James W. H. Monger and Hans-Jurgen Gotze organized a multidisciplinary, multinational committee that coordinated the global project.

Meeting at the IUGG XIX General Assembly in Vancouver in August 1987, the committee developed preliminary guidelines for transect compilations, following suggestions from transect compilers.

Proposals for transects were solicited from ICL national committees, government geoscience agencies, universities, and scientists.

A total of 140 proposals were received from Africa (41), South America (30), China (18), USSR (12), USA (12), Europe (12), Australia and New Zealand (11), India (3), and Southeast Asia (1).