The research looked at how natural grasslands in Qinghai grow and spread. They found that the grasslands have a unique shape and pattern of distribution. In the north, the grasslands are only found in certain areas, not in the Qilian Mountains. As you move from the temperate steppe to the desert, the grasslands change gradually. They start in the west of the Huang River area, then go through Qinghai Lake-Gong He, and end up in the Qaidam Basin. The grasslands change from mountain meadows to alpine meadows, and finally to alpine grasslands. The areas where the grasslands grow are not connected, and they overlap in both horizontal and vertical ways.