Geographical and geological GIS boundaries of the Tibetan Plateau and adjacent mountain regions

<strong>Introduction</strong> Geographical scale, in terms of spatial extent, provide a basis for other branches of science. This dataset contains newly proposed geographical and geological GIS boundaries for the <strong>Pan-Tibetan Highlands </strong>(new proposed name for the High Mountain Asia), based on geological and geomorphological features. This region comprises the <strong>Tibetan Plateau</strong> and three adjacent mountain regions: the <strong>Himalaya</strong>, <strong>Hengduan Mountains</strong> and <strong>Mountains of Central Asia</strong>, and boundaries are also given for each subregion individually. The dataset will benefit quantitative spatial analysis by providing a well-defined geographical scale for other branches of research, aiding cross-disciplinary comparisons and synthesis, as well as reproducibility of research results. The dataset comprises three subsets, and we provide three data formats (.shp, .geojson and .kmz) for each of them. Shapefile format (.shp) was generated in ArcGIS Pro, and the other two were converted from shapefile, the conversion steps refer to 'Data processing' section below. The following is a description of the three subsets: (1) The GIS boundaries we newly defined of the Pan-Tibetan Highlands and its four constituent sub-regions, i.e. the Tibetan Plateau, Himalaya, Hengduan Mountains and the Mountains of Central Asia. All files are placed in the "Pan-Tibetan Highlands (Liu et al._2022)" folder. (2) We also provide GIS boundaries that were applied by other studies (cited in Fig. 3 of our work) in the folder "Tibetan Plateau and adjacent mountains (Others’ definitions)". If these data is used, please cite the relevent paper accrodingly. In addition, it is worthy to note that the GIS boundaries of Hengduan Mountains (Li et al. 1987a) and Mountains of Central Asia (Foggin et al. 2021) were newly generated in our study using Georeferencing toolbox in ArcGIS Pro. (3) Geological assemblages and characters of the Pan-Tibetan Highlands, including Cratons and micro-continental blocks (Fig. S1), plus sutures, faults and thrusts (Fig. 4), are placed in the "Pan-Tibetan Highlands (geological files)" folder. Note: <strong>High Mountain Asia</strong>: The name ‘High Mountain Asia’ is the only direct synonym of Pan-Tibetan Highlands, but this term is both grammatically awkward and somewhat misleading, and hence the term ‘Pan-Tibetan Highlands’ is here proposed to replace it. <strong>Third Pole</strong>: The first use of the term ‘Third Pole’ was in reference to the Himalaya by Kurz &amp; Montandon (1933), but the usage was subsequently broadened to the Tibetan Plateau or the whole of the Pan-Tibetan Highlands. The mainstream scientific literature refer the ‘Third Pole’ to the region encompassing the Tibetan Plateau, Himalaya, Hengduan Mountains, Karakoram, Hindu Kush and Pamir. This definition was surpported by geological strcture (Main Pamir Thrust) in the western part, and generally overlaps with the ‘Tibetan Plateau’ <em>sensu lato</em> defined by some previous studies, but is more specific. More discussion and reference about names please refer to the paper. The figures (Figs. 3, 4, S1) mentioned above were attached in the end of this document. <strong>Data processing</strong> We provide three data formats. Conversion of shapefile data to kmz format was done in ArcGIS Pro. We used the <em>Layer to KML</em> tool in Conversion Toolbox to convert the shapefile to kmz format. Conversion of shapefile data to geojson format was done in R. We read the data using the <em>shapefile</em> function of the raster package, and wrote it as a geojson file using the <em>geojson_write</em> function in the geojsonio package. <strong>Version</strong> Version 2022.1. <strong>Acknowledgements</strong> This study was supported by the Strategic Priority Research Program of Chinese Academy of Sciences (XDB31010000), the National Natural Science Foundation of China (41971071), the Key Research Program of Frontier Sciences, CAS (ZDBS-LY-7001). We are grateful to our coauthors insightful discussion and comments. We also want to thank professors Jed Kaplan, Yin An, Dai Erfu, Zhang Guoqing, Peter Cawood, Tobias Bolch and Marc Foggin for suggestions and providing GIS files. <strong>Citation</strong> Liu, J., Milne, R. I., Zhu, G. F., Spicer, R. A., Wambulwa, M. C., Wu, Z. Y., Li, D. Z. (2022). Name and scale matters: Clarifying the geography of Tibetan Plateau and adjacent mountain regions. Global and Planetary Change, In revision Jie Liu &amp; Guangfu Zhu. (2022). Geographical and geological GIS boundaries of the Tibetan Plateau and adjacent mountain regions (Version 2022.1). https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.6432940 <strong>Contacts</strong> Dr. Jie LIU: E-mail: [e-mail]; Mr. Guangfu ZHU: [e-mail] Institution: Kunming Institute of Botany, Chinese Academy of Sciences Address: 132# Lanhei Road, Heilongtan, Kunming 650201, Yunnan, China <strong>Copyright</strong> This dataset is available under the Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-SA 4.0).<strong>引言</strong> 空间尺度作为地理范围的量化指标，为其他学科研究提供了基础框架。本数据集基于地质与地貌特征，为<strong>泛青藏高原地区（Pan-Tibetan Highlands）</strong>（为<strong>高亚洲地区（High Mountain Asia）</strong>拟定的新名称）提供了最新划定的地理与地质GIS边界。该区域涵盖<strong>青藏高原</strong>及三个相邻山地单元：<strong>喜马拉雅山脉</strong>、<strong>横断山脉</strong>与<strong>中亚山地</strong>，同时单独给出了各次级区域的边界。本数据集通过为跨学科研究提供清晰明确的地理尺度，助力定量空间分析、跨学科对比与综合研究，同时提升研究结果的可重复性。 本数据集包含三个子数据集，每个子数据集均提供三种格式的数据：.shp、.geojson及.kmz。其中Shapefile格式（.shp）由ArcGIS Pro生成，其余两种格式均由Shapefile转换而来，转换步骤详见下文"数据处理"章节。 以下为三个子数据集的说明： (1) 本研究最新划定的泛青藏高原地区及其四个次级区域（青藏高原、喜马拉雅山脉、横断山脉与中亚山地）的GIS边界，所有文件均存放于"泛青藏高原地区（Liu等，2022）"文件夹中。 (2) 本研究在图3中引用的其他已有研究所使用的GIS边界，存放于"青藏高原及相邻山地（其他学者划定方案）"文件夹中。若使用该部分数据，请引用对应文献。此外需说明：横断山脉（Li等，1987a）与中亚山地（Foggin等，2021）的GIS边界为本研究通过ArcGIS Pro的地理配准工具箱全新生成。 (3) 泛青藏高原地区的地质组合与特征数据，包括克拉通与微陆块（图S1）、缝合带、断裂与逆冲断层（图4），存放于"泛青藏高原地区（地质文件）"文件夹中。 注：<strong>高亚洲地区（High Mountain Asia）</strong>："高亚洲地区"是"泛青藏高原地区"唯一的直接同义词，但该术语存在语法缺陷且易产生歧义，因此本研究拟定"泛青藏高原地区"取而代之。 <strong>第三极（Third Pole）</strong>："第三极"一词最初由Kurz与Montandon（1933）用于指代喜马拉雅山脉，后续其使用范围被扩展至青藏高原乃至整个泛青藏高原地区。当前主流科学文献中，"第三极"指代涵盖青藏高原、喜马拉雅山脉、横断山脉、喀喇昆仑山脉、兴都库什山脉与帕米尔高原的区域。该定义得到西部地质构造（主帕米尔逆冲断层）的支撑，总体上与部分既往研究中广义的（sensu lato）"青藏高原"定义重合，但更为精准。有关名称的更多讨论与参考文献详见原文。上文提及的图件（图3、图4、图S1）均附于本文档末尾。 <strong>数据处理</strong> 本数据集提供三种数据格式。Shapefile数据转kmz格式的操作在ArcGIS Pro中完成：通过转换工具箱中的"图层转KML"工具实现格式转换。Shapefile数据转geojson格式的操作在R语言环境中完成：使用raster包的shapefile函数读取数据，并通过geojsonio包的geojson_write函数将数据写入为geojson文件。 <strong>版本</strong> 版本号：2022.1 <strong>致谢</strong> 本研究得到中国科学院战略性先导科技专项（XDB31010000）、国家自然科学基金（41971071）以及中国科学院前沿科学重点研究计划（ZDBS-LY-7001）的资助。感谢所有合作者的深入讨论与宝贵意见。同时感谢Jed Kaplan、Yin An、Dai Erfu、Zhang Guoqing、Peter Cawood、Tobias Bolch及Marc Foggin等教授提出的建设性建议与提供的GIS数据文件。 <strong>引用</strong> Liu, J., Milne, R. I., Zhu, G. F., Spicer, R. A., Wambulwa, M. C., Wu, Z. Y., Li, D. Z. (2022). Name and scale matters: Clarifying the geography of Tibetan Plateau and adjacent mountain regions. Global and Planetary Change, In revision Jie Liu & Guangfu Zhu. (2022). Geographical and geological GIS boundaries of the Tibetan Plateau and adjacent mountain regions (Version 2022.1). https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.6432940 <strong>联系方式</strong> 刘杰博士：邮箱 [e-mail]；朱光富先生：邮箱 [e-mail] 所属机构：中国科学院昆明植物研究所 通讯地址：中国云南省昆明市黑龙潭蓝黑路132号，邮编650201 <strong>版权声明</strong> 本数据集采用知识共享署名-相同方式共享4.0国际许可协议（CC BY-SA 4.0）进行发布。