Palaeohydrological evolution of the late Cenozoic saline lake in the Qaidam Basin, NE Tibetan Plateau: Tectonic vs. climatic control

As the largest Cenozoic terrestrial intermountain basin on the Tibetan Plateau, the Qaidam Basin is an ideal setting to understand the coupled controls of tectonics and climate on hydrological evolution. In this study, we used 47,846 data of carbonate and chloride contents from 146 boreholes to reconstruct the Neogene-Quaternary basin-wide hydrological evolution of the Qaidam Basin. Our results show that during the early Miocene (22–15 Ma), the...