For billions of people, mountain meltwater is essential for drinking water and sanitation, food and energy security, and the integrity of the environment. But today, as the world warms, glaciers are melting faster than ever, making the water cycle more unpredictable and extreme. And because of glacial retreat, floods, droughts, …
decline of the alps: Scientists say that the Alps, spread over seven European nations, are now a mere shadow of what they were. A team led by Sean Willett of the University of Washington in the US, has found that the culprit is likely massive erosion, triggered by a sudden …
The 20th century had been the wettest in the high mountains of northern Pakistan in the last millennium, according to a team of Swiss and German scientists. In a study, published in the April 27 issue of Nature (Vol 440, No 7088), they reported that the Karakoram and Himalayan mountains …
Nandadevi.org & mountainshperds.com riding high Lata is an address of protest and conflict. It was the village in the higher alpine pasture areas of Chamoli, Uttaranchal, where the first sparks of the Chipko movement were fired. It's the home of the bhutiyas, who lost their right to shepherding, to trade …
quake forecast: Researchers at Yale and the University of Washington, both in the US, suggest a new way to forecast severe earthquakes. They say that big earthquakes, like the 2004 Sumatra earthquake, may be caused by the build-up of sediment on top of subduction zones
in a crackdown aimed at cleaning Maharashtra's two famous hill stations, Mahabaleshwar and Panchgani, the Maharashtra Pollution Control Board (mpcb) has issued orders against polluting hotels and institutions of the two places. The respective municipal councils have also been hauled for setting up waste management facilities. Both the places together …
Watching the iridescent roller bird flash in the sun and take off, one might wonder where it is going. What would it encounter on its leisurely journey as it sweeps across ridges of rugged mountains, dips down into fields of paddy, past village ponds and thatched huts, resuming through inaccessible …
the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (unesco) has been asked to include Nepal's Sagarmatha (Everest) National Park (snp), along with two other natural sites in Belize and Peru, in its Endangered World Heritage list due to the effect of global warming on them. Temba Tsheri Sherpa, the youngest …
function graph() { var popurl="image/20040930/26-graphs.jpg" winpops=window.open(popurl,"","width=300,height=475,scrollbars=yes") } High altitude sickness The Brits made India's hill-stations. Invariably, a responsible officer of the colonial government chanced upon a scene of delirious beauty that completely seduced his senses. Ootacamund or Udagamandalam (Ooty) in the Western Ghats was
function illustration() { var popurl="image/20040930/30-illus.jpg" winpops=window.open(popurl,"","width=500,height=450,scrollbars=yes") } Scarcity amidst plenty summarises the water problem ailing hill-stations today. They receive good rainfall but there is no mechanism to collect runoff for later use. Result: water shortage every year. How did the Brits manage it? They cashed on the terrain, and gravity, …
The stinky spectacle of hill-stations getting buried under their own garbage is turning more real. Look down the slopes and you will see mounds of coloured plastic bags, and tourist staples such as empty packets of potato chips and plastic water bottles. All of which is mixed with vegetable waste …
Evam Piljain, an 80-year-old Toda who's spent all her life in Ooty, feels distraught at the sight of her hometown. "I cannot sit in the verandah anymore,' she says. She moves to her drawing room and gazes wistfully at a photograph of Ooty taken in the early part of the …
Planning is non-existent for India's hill-stations, admit hill municipalities. In the absence of a master plan, a free-for-all situation prevails where one constructs wherever one finds free space; if there is lack of space, one can simply add another storey to one's house. There is no tourist plan, which becomes …
Incredible India. The land of mystic splendour. The hidden paradise. These are just three slogans to convince people to turn themselves into tourists and land up, every summer, in droves in hill-stations. Ooty's annual flower show attracts 0.2 million tourists over two days. In addition, it receives over 0.3 million …
much to the pleasure of conservationists and mountain lovers, the Uttaranchal government recently formulated a new policy to regulate mountaineering activities and make them more eco-friendly. The new rule will come into force from next year. "The aim of the new law is to stop haphazard mountaineering. We will also …
Rubble from the landslide that occurred 10 months ago on the Varunavat mountain in Uttarkashi threatens to swamp the town during this monsoon. Debris on the slope of the crumbling Varunavat mountain. Uttarkashi town is seen at the foothills. IN the first week of July, the worst fears of the …
In 2002, the Survey of India began a year-long programme which celebrated 200 years of the Great Trigonometrical Survey (gts), a mammoth cross-country exercise the colonial government undertook in the nineteenth century to map the terrain of the (then) Indian subcontinent. A scientific endeavour that made perfect political and economic …
The unique assemblages of flora and fauna in the Himalayan region make it one of the most important biodiversity hotspots on the Indian subcontinent. Seventy-five protected areas (PAs) encompassing 9.48% of the region have been created to conserve this biodiversity and the fragile Himalayan landscape. However, this has engendered conflicts …
Desolate, cold, inhospitable, relegated to the backyards of exploration and knowledge. Antarctica did not emerge from this unfortunate fate till less than 100 years ago, before which, whalers and seafarers were its only visitors. Cartographers barely acknowledged its presence (or chose to ignore it altogether). And the first explorations, which …
It is the earth's final frontier. Antarctica, a gigantic mass of ocean-encased rocky islands south of the Antarctic Circle, is the earth's southern-most continent. There is no place colder or drier. Stark but majestic, uncompromisingly bleak but alluring, 98 per cent of the continent's 14 million kilometres (km) is sheathed …
A 1996 expert group report on the Indian Antarctic programme says: "The programme has so far been working in complete isolation with no substantial element of international cooperation. While actual attempts are being made by various countries through the aegis of SCAR (Scientific Committee on Antarctic Research) to join hands …
