Cirques are classic glacial erosion landforms, and studying their morphological development provides valuable paleoclimatic and paleoenvironmental insights. However, research on cirques on the Tibetan Plateau and surrounding mountain ranges has focused primarily on the southern, eastern, and northwestern plateau, with limited attention given to the northeastern region, hindering comparative analyses between different regions. In this study, 1132 ice-free cirques in the Qilian Mountains on the northeastern edge of the Tibetan Plateau are examined, and their spatial distribution patterns and influential factors are analyzed. The results show that the cirques’ aspect in the Qilian Mountains is predominantly north-facing. Influenced by climate and lithology, the size of the cirques gradually increases from east to west, and the elevation parameters of the cirques are significantly affected by aspect.. The cirques in the western section are shaped primarily by lateral erosion, whereas those in the central section experience more balanced erosion, and those in the eastern section are controlled primarily by longitudinal erosion. A comparison with existing cirque morphological data from other regions of the Tibetan Plateau and surrounding mountain ranges reveals that the formation of cirques is affected by both climatic and non-climatic factors, and their formation ages are difficult to determine.

Population density estimation is integral to the effective conservation and management of wildlife. The snow leopard Panthera uncia is categorized as Vulnerable on the IUCN Red List, and reliable information on its density is a prerequisite for its conservation and management. Little is known about the status of the snow leopard in the central and eastern Qilian Mountains, China. To address this, we estimated the population density of the snow leopard using a spatially explicit capture–recapture model based on camera trapping in Machang in the central and eastern Qilian Mountains during January–March 2019. We set up 40 camera traps and recorded 84 separate snow leopard captures over 3,024 trap-days. We identified 18 individual snow leopards and estimated their density to be 2.26/100 km2. Our study provides baseline information on the snow leopard and the first population estimate for the species in the central and eastern Qilian Mountains.

We investigate the changes at nine glaciers in the Ningchan and Shuiguan river source, eastern Qilian Mountains, between 1972 and 2010. According to analysis of topographic maps and multispectral satellite data, all nine glaciers in the study area have retreated, by a maximum of 250 ± 57.4 m and a minimum of 91 ± 57.4 m. The total glacier area decreased by 1.20 km2, corresponding to 9.9% of the glacierized area in 1972. Comparing the two DEMs generated from the topographic maps and Real-Time Kinematic GPS data, the mean glacier thinning rate was 0.64 m yr− 1 between 1972 and 2010. The most significant thinning generally occurred on the termini. The ice-volume loss was about 106.8 ± 46.7 × 10− 3 km3 (equal to 90.8 ± 39.7 × 10− 3 km3 w.e.), which suggested a mean water discharge of 0.1 ± 0.05 m3/s during 1972–2010. Based on analysis of meteorological data, the summer temperature (June–August) tends to increase over a similar time period. The consistency of temperature increase and glacier shrinkage allows us to suggest that air temperature plays an important role in glacier changes in this region.