## 5 Conclusions and Discussion
Against the background of warming, hydrological regime changes, such as increased runoff, ice and snow melt water, accelerated permafrost thawing, land use/cover changes and anthropic activity, would synthetically have complicated effects of wetland variation in arid regions [37]. Ice and snow melt, released soil moisture of permafrost, caused by the temperature increasing, vary the water supplies of wetlands. For example, in the origin of the Yangtze River such as Tuotuo River, Dangqu, Gaerqu and Buqu, _etc._ wetlands are primarily supplied by melt water originating from the large glaciers of the Tanggula Mountain. The wetland changes may be more affected by temperature change. Geophysical surveys in the TRH region have suggested that warming temperatures lead to thinning and eventual breaching of permafrost, which may be the reason for the shrinkage of most large wetland patches. For example, as mentioned by [PERSON] _et al._[38] and [PERSON] _et al._[39], initial warming leads to lake expansion followed by drainage as the permafrost degrades still further. The influence of anthropic activity on wetland change always takes effect together with climate change. In 2005, the State Council [40] approved the _Ecological Protection and Construction Master Plan of Qinghai Sanyiangyuan Nature Reserve_. The 22 projects, such as forbidding grazing, combating desertification, controlling rodent pests and human-induced rainfall, were instigated to recuperate the grassland. The human-induced rainfall, which increased the water supplies of wetland, has an important influence on wetland changes. For example, the lakes, reservoirs & ponds increased (Figure 5) in the source region of the Yellow River (the Qumalai and Maduo counties), which was directly related to the human-induced rainfall and _HI_ increase. Therefore, understanding the wetland changes and their response to climate change under anthropic disturbance is more complicated. Wetland study is a hot research field in modern ecology and environmental science. The study of wetland changes and its responses to climate changes in the TRH region, which is relatively weak in the field of research on land use/cover change process in Qinghai-Tibet Plateau, occupies an important position among global environmental changes. Therefore, this study could provide a valuable and scientific basis for understanding the correlation of wetland changes with climate factors. Wetland dynamics would greatly affect the structure, function and process of the landscape, as well as population dynamics, biodiversity and ecosystem processes [14,31,32,41]. The conclusions of this study will provide some scientific references for the management and protection of wetlands in the TRH region, especially for restoration, reconstruction and conservation of degraded wetlands. The study on the correlation of the wetland change process and global climate changes is one of the prospective priority research fields in the future. The changes of wetland landscape patterns will produce profound impacts on regional and global climate changes, for example, it will accelerate climate change. Climate warming and drying will cause the shrinkage of wetland and accelerate peat decomposition. Therefore, there is an interaction and mutual influence between dynamic changes of wetland landscape patterns and global climate changes. This study is an attempt to understand the wetland changes and its response to climate changes, and it is also an important contribution to the studies on global climate change.