The uplift of the Tibetan Plateau is the result of the collision of the India-Asia Plates with the result of the geodynamic process of the earth's lithosphere, and has profound impacts on the global and Asian climate changes, the Asian geomorphology and surface environment, and the abundant surface and underground mineral resources. Thus, the study of the uplift history of the Tibetan Plateau can not only solve the major scientific problems mentioned above, but also provide a theoretical basis for the plateau regional environmental resource exploitation and sustainable development. In this paper, we briefly review the main progresses of recent studies concerning the uplift of the Tibetan Plateau. It is shown that the Tibetan Plateau has experienced uplift processes of multiple stages and episodes, quasisynchronous but with different amplitudes, which are accelerated in a later period.
The uplift processes can be divided into three main uplift stages, those during 55~30 Ma, 25~30 Ma, and 8~0 Ma, respectively. The early uplift mainly happens in the Qiangtang and Lhasa terrains of the central-southern Tibetan Plateau during 55~30 Ma, which might be close to the modern plateau elevation and is called the "Proto-Tibetan Plateau"; they are deformation uplifts in the peripheral area, quasisynchronous but with different amplitudes. The second stage uplift mainly occurs in the Himalaya and Hoh Xil-Kunlun Mountains in the north and south of the "Proto-Tibetan Plateau" during 25~10 Ma. The "Proto-Tibetan Plateau" may have first reached its present elevation and started to squeeze its materials out to both E-W sides, resulting in the N-S extensional rifts, accompanied by a widespread deformation and uplift of the northern part of the plateau, but with limited magnitudes. Since~8 Ma, the Himalayas and NE Tibetan Plateau in the southern and northern margins of the major plateau begins to experience an accelerated uplift, manifesting as a set of episodic short intense tectonic deformation events, and finally develops into its present configuration.

Tibetan Plateau  /  uplift  /  episodic