In a study commissioned by Greenpeace, scientists said global warming was melting glaciers which in turn was breaking up and drying out the land, leaving lakes and rivers without water.

"Climate change is wreaking havoc at the birthplace of China's mother river," a Greenpeace researcher said in China after releasing the study.

The Tibetan Plateau, known as the "roof of the world" and the source of both the Yangtze and Yellow Rivers -- China's two longest --, has seen an overall temperature rise of nearly one degree Celsius during the past 30 years, the study by scientists said.

"The higher the altitude, the faster the temperature rises," it said.

The rise in temperature has resulted in the glacier area in the region decreasing in size by 17 percent in 2000 compared with its size in 1966.

In the last 30 years, the shrinkage rate of the glacier area is 10 times faster than that of the previous 300 years, the report said.

"From here it is a domino effect that harms the flora, fauna, landscape and people of the Yellow River source region -- and ultimately the river itself," said Professor Liu Shiyin, the leading author of the report.

Over 120 million people rely on the river's water for domestic as well as agricultural and industrial uses.

The river's source region plays the major role in supplying the whole river basin, providing 55.6 percent of the water for the length of the river above the city of Lanzhou, about 550 kilometers (330 miles) from the river's source.

"Water shortage and reduced runoff at the source will have far-reaching impacts upon the economy, society and people's life, not only in the source region, but in the middle and low reaches of the Yellow River," China climate change researcher Li Mo Xuan Liu said.

The Yellow River has historically devastated northern China with its frequent floods in the middle and lower reaches where Chinese civilization has flourished for thousands of years.

Since the early 1990s, however, the river has increasingly dried up in the lower reaches, not only due to ecological imbalances in the headwaters, but also because of growing demands for water and environmental degradation along its course.

All rights reserved. � 2005 Agence France-Presse. Sections of the information displayed on this page (dispatches, photographs, logos) are protected by intellectual property rights owned by Agence France-Presse. As a consequence, you may not copy, reproduce, modify, transmit, publish, display or in any way commercially exploit any of the content of this section without the prior written consent of Agence France-Presse.

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