Introduction to the special issue “Tibetan tectonics and its effect on the long‐term evolution of climate, vegetation and environment”

The long-term evolution of the Tibetan Plateau significantly influenced Asian climate, nearby ocean physics and chemistry, and terrestrial biodiversity. This range of impacts has attracted research attention from a correspondingly broad range of disciplines, providing important new insights into prolonged and emerging debates concerning the Himalayan-Tibetan morphotectonic evolution and its impacts on the long-term evolution of climate, biodiversity, and the environment on regional to global scales. To communicate the latest advances on this coupled tectonic, climatic and biological system, we have launched a special virtual issue in Terra Nova and solicited submissions of 20 papers in total. The papers cover a wide range of topics that fall in the following, partially overlapping, categories: pre-India-Asia collision tectonic configuration; post-collision deformation; sedimentary system: source to sink studies, climatic forcing, and river incision; and climatic and biospheric influence of the Tibetan Plateau.