Surrounded by mountains in the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau, the Site is composed of wetlands distributed in the Nilaba and Kangmarangduo areas within the Sichuan Seda Nilaba Wetland Nature Reserve. The Site is dominated by peatlands and permanent herbaceous marshes, with the Nilaba area constituting 88% of the Site’s forest-free peatlands and about 93% of its marshes. The peat swamps have a carbon pool mass of over five million tons, making them an important carbon sink. The Kangmarangduo area features most of the permanent rivers, alpine shrubbery, and alpine meadow of the Site as well as some marshes and peat soils. The various wetland types and grasslands distributed in these two areas offer habitat to 110 bird species and 34 mammal species, including threatened species such as alpine musk deer (Moschus chrysogaster) and snow leopard (Uncia uncia). The Site has an average elevation of over 4,000 metres, and is one of the highest places in the world where fish are found. Many of these, such as Chungtien schizothoracin (Ptychobarbus chungtienensis) and Tibetan stone loach (Triplophysa stoliczkai), are endemic to the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau.