It is dug up on the Tibetan plateau, to the concern of environmentalists.

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Those suggestions are corroborated by a study led by Xu Baiqing of the Chinese Academy of Sciences' Institute of Tibetan Plateau Research, in Beijing.

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Lushan, where the quake struck, is home to 1.5 million people where the fertile Sichuan plain meets foothills that eventually rise to the Tibetan plateau.

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Lushan, where the quake struck, lies where the fertile Sichuan plain meets foothills that eventually rise to the Tibetan plateau and sits atop the Longmenshan fault.

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Its bottled water, energy drinks and yogurt are ubiquitous from the urban markets of Beijing and Shanghai to rural stalls in the snowy mountains of the Tibetan plateau.

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But unlike Everest, which is cocooned by other peaks on the Tibetan plateau, McKinley stands unchallenged, a solid wall of rock and ice rising like an apparition above the wild taiga.

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Yaks live in alpine tundra, grasslands and the cold desert regions of the northern Tibetan Plateau, ranging from 13, 000 to 20, 000 feet (4, 000 to 6, 100 meters) in elevation, according to the IUCN.

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Kaziranga, a 330-square-mile expanse on the southern bank of the swirling Brahmaputra River, which flows from the Tibetan Plateau to the Bay of Bengal, is one of the final sanctuaries of rhinoceros unicornis, the one-horned rhino.

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