This study aims to enhance understanding of the dynamic relationship among biodiversity conservation and management, gender, and livelihoods in the greater Himalayan region.
We have utilized satellite images of 1975 and 2001 to reveal the slow response of glaciers to climatic warming in the Great Himalayan Range, Jammu and Kashmir, India. Correlation of various glacier morphometric parameters with reference to glacier area change and shift in the snout position revealed that morphometric parameters exert prime control on area changes over glaciers, but do not have much control on the snout retreat or advancement of glaciers. The
Kalimpong, Dec. 2: Around 300 Buddhists began a 23-day-long padayatra from a monastery in Darjeeling today to spread a message on clean and green Himalayas.
Attired in traditional maroon gowns, nuns and monks of the Drukpa lineage chanted Buddhist hymns as they, and their followers, walked in single file through the streets of the hill town.
With global warming hitting the Tibetan plateau hard, scientists gather to plan an international research campaign to understand and mitigate changes at the 'third pole'.
Himalayan glaciers that feed rivers Indus, Ganga and Brahmaputra are no longer accumulating ice, claims a study by American glaciologists, which could adversely hit crores of people living downstream of the vast mountain range.
The Greater and Trans-Himalayan tracts are cold deserts that have severe seasonal and resource scarce environments. Covering the bulk of Indian Himalayas , they are a rich repository of biodiversity values and ecosystem services. The region has a large protected area (PA) network which has not been completely effective in conserving these unique values.
With more recent data on the Himalayan glaciers from the Indian Remote Sensing (IRS) satellites, scientists of the Space Applications Centre (SAC) of the Indian Space Research Organisaation (ISRO) at Ahmedabad now have much stronger evidence of the finger print of global warming in the observed alarming retreat of these glaciers. The new results were presented at the ongoing National Space Science Symposium (NSSS-2008) here by Dr. Anil V. Kulkarni of SAC. In 2004 Dr. Kulkarni and his colleagues investigated the spatial extent of 466 glaciers in the basins of Chenab, Parbati and Baspa using remote sensed data and compared them with the 1962 topographic data of the Survey of India. They found an overall reduction of 21 per cent in the glacial surface area. They had also found that the process of deglaciation had led to the fragmentation of large glaciers resulting in the reduction in the mean surface area of glacial extent from 1 sq. km. to 0.32 sq. km. during 1962-2004. The new data pertains to two additional basins of Warwan and Bhut comprising 253 and 189 glaciers respectively. Together with the earlier data on 466 glaciers, the cumulative area of these 908 Himalayan glaciers has been found to have reduced from 3391 sq. km. to 2721 sq. km., implying a total area reduction of 20 per cent. Another new finding is that the snow line
