High Asia region

Introduction

Encompassing extensive regions of Bhutan, China, Nepal, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, and Mongolia, northern areas of India, Pakistan, and Afghanistan, and significant parts of the Russian republics of Tuva and Altai, High Asia actually represents a more real region than those ones designated by the concepts of Central Asia or Inner Asia, both controversial and ambiguous to some extent.

Specifically, the High Asia region consists of a succession of high mountain ranges and high plateaus of Asia, prominent among which is the Tibetan Plateau, the Qilian Mountain, the Himalayas, the Hengduan Mountains, the Karakoram, the Hindu Kush, the Pamir Mountains, the Tian Shan, the Kunlun Mountains, the Altai-Sayan region, and the Khangai Mountains.

Definition

According to the eminent geographer Dr Hermann Kreutzmann, the first to become aware of the complex unit of the High Asia region were the german explorers Robert von Schlagintweit and Hermann von Schlagintweit-Sakünlünski. Dr H. Kreutzman defines High Asia as “a particular biocultural space up to 2500 meters, altitudinal belt where pastoralists have played an important role in shaping relationships, connecting regions, exchanging goods and valuable information" ^[1].

The High Asia region can be firstly categorised in a simple manner by four determining factors:

A minimum altitude of 2400 meters of altitude (maximum of 8848 meters in Everest mountain), above which AMS (Acute Mountain Sickness) commonly occurs^[2]
A particular climate characterised by very short and soft summers and very long and cold winters
A Tundra type landscape and biome called Alpine Tundra
Oxygen scarcity potentially dangerous for humans in all the region

Further categorization

Additionally, High Asia is featured not only as a unique ecosystem with an exceptional high-altitude environment but also it has historically been and continues to be a major economic and cultural crossroad.

Thus, a more detailed description of the High Asia region includes:

The term "Roof of the World"^[3], a metaphoric description of the highest region in the world, also known as "High Asia", referring to the mountainous interior of Asia (whether to the Himalaya, Tibet or Pamir areas), containing the largest concentration of high peaks with a unique altitudinal belt up to 7000 meters high, keeping a 17 % of total glaciers and icecaps on Earth^[4]
A very special atmosphere requiring high-altitude adaptation, because of the oxygen scarcity, high-intensity solar radiation, extreme climate variability and a profusion of microclimates
A massive natural water-tower and fresh water reservoir capable of generating the World´s largest fluvial network that influences the lives of about 40 percent of the World’s population
The most extensive example of the Alpine Tundra biome: a grasslands belt containing very nutritious alpine pastures forming an altitudinal gradient between 2500-5500 meters of altitude.
One of the most biologically diverse regions in the World, containing three Biodiversity Hotspots placed in high-mountain areas (Himalaya, Mountain of Southwest China and Central Asia Mountains), and many protected areas placed at high-altitude.
An exclusive environment for two emblematic species: snow leopard and yak
A vital influential factor in the climate regulation by operating as a huge lung for the overpopulated South Asia region and propitiating the monsoon rains, as well as a key piece in the terrestrial atmospheric circulation (A Zhisheng, JE Kutzbach, WL Prell, SC Porter. Evolution of Asian monsoons and phased uplift of the Himalaya–Tibetan plateau since Late Miocene times, Nature 411, 62-66 (3 May 2001)
A major cultural crossroad with an impressive cultural heritage, traceable across its oral traditions, music, crafts and arts, literature, and line of thinking, and enriched by a long millennial ethnic-religious interaction based on multiculturalism and peaceful coexistence among practitioners of three main religions: Buddhism, Hinduism, Islam
A major socio-economic crossroad marked by a continuous process of economic, material and knowledge exchange, propitiating ancestral trading routes, as the Silk Road, the Tea Horse Road and many other regional and local barter systems such as salt caravans.
One of the most ancient, prominent, and dynamic agro-pastoral systems in the World, formed by a set of particular mixed pastoral and agrarian complexes based on high-mountain farming (barley, potatoes, medicinal plants), and high-altitude pastoralism with yak and cashmere goat as the most representative species.

High Asia fluvial network

With the establishment of the International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development (ICIMOD) in 1983, the High Asia region has received a special attention from the institutional side due to the enormous importance of its water resources and the adverse effects of global warming and climate change in this extremely vulnerable environment. The fluvial network generated in the High Asia region extends over a large portion of Asia. The largest watercourses that depend on the High Asia region are the Ob river, the Irtysh river, the Yenisei river, the Angara river, the Selenge river, the Lena river, the Syr Darya river, the Amu Darya river, the Indus river, the Ganges riiver, the Brahmaputra river, the Salween river, the Mekong river, the Yangtze river, and the Huang He river.

According to the World Glacier Monitoring Service data, almost 115.000 km² of glaciers and permanent icefields belongs to the High Asia region, making up some 17% of the total glacier and ice caps on Earth. The glacier-fed rivers originating from the Himalaya mountain ranges surrounding the Tibetan Plateau comprise the largest river run-off from any single location in the world. The rivers that drain these mountains influence the lives of 40 % per cent of the World’s population^[4]

Yaks in the High Asia region

Since ancient times until present-day, the coalition yaks/humans have shaped some of the most stunning cultural spaces in the world, providing the foundations for human sustainable livelihoods where climate and geography didn´t seem to allow it.

The so-called “yak civilization” emerged in the Tibetan plateau when the first human colonizers tamed the wild yak around 3500 BP, and this civilization spread later throughout the high grasslands of the surrounding mountain regions: Himalaya, Karakoram, Hindu Kush, Pamir, Tian-Shan, Altai, Sayan, and Khangai. Professor Cai Li, a distinguished scholar at the South-West University of Nationalities (Chengdu), who had dedicated himself to the lifelong study of the yak and the role of the yak in the life of the people, suggested that without the yak no civilisation would have developed in this ecological niche in this part of the world^[5].

Nowadays, yak is an essential element of the high altitude regions of Central Asia^[6]. But yak husbandry presents both specific problems and other similar pictures to other contemporary pastoral systems around the World.. Among these, the main problems to be highlighted are the following: restrictions to mobility, forced and induced sedentarisation, planned re-colonisation, assumption of new economic models and new roles in the management of protected areas, re-shaping of rural urban environments, articulation of strategies to protect the cultural heritage^[7].

The domestic yak (Bos grunniens) is a long-haired domesticated bovid found throughout the Himalaya region of southern Central Asia, the Tibetan Plateau and as far north as Mongolia and Russia. It is descended from the wild yak (Bos mutus)^[8]

According to ICIMOD, "yak are increasingly coming under pressure with closed borders and restrictions on grazing and movement. Furthermore, yak herders are facing immense livelihood challenges, not least due to climate change, and the younger generation is unwilling to continue with traditional yak herding, which poses a severe threat to this traditional occupation"^[9]

References

↑ Kreutzmann, Hermann (2012). «Chapter 1: Pastoral Practices in Transition». Pastoral practices in High Asia. Springer. p. 2. ISBN 978-94-007-3846-1.
↑ «Baillie, Kenneth; Simpson, Alistair. "Altitude Tutorials - Altitude Sickness". Apex (Altitude Physiology Expeditions). Archived from the original on 9 January 2010. Retrieved 26 January 2010.». Falta la |url= (ayuda)
↑ Keay, John (1983) When Men and Mountains Meet ISBN 0-7126-0196-1; p. 153
↑ ^a ^b Zemp, M; Roer, I; Kääb, A; Hoelzle, M; Paul, F; Haeberli, W (2008). Global Glacier Changes: facts and figures. UNEP, World Glacier Monitoring Service.
↑ Li, Cai (2003). The Yak (second edition). FAO.
↑ Wiener, Gerald (2003). FAO, ed. The Yak (second edition).
↑ Carralero Benítez, Santiago J. (2015). Landscape after Disaster. Adaptation and Resilience to Cultural Change among Gyêgu Tibetans (Master Thesis). UNED.
↑ Grubb, P. (2005). "Order Artiodactyla". In Wilson, D.E.; Reeder, D.M. Mammal Species of the World: A Taxonomic and Geographic Reference (3rd ed.). Johns Hopkins University Press. p. 691. ISBN 978-0-8018-8221-0.
↑ Molden, David (2016). «Foreword». Yak on the move. ICIMOD. p. V.

External Links

[1] Kreutzmann, Hermann (2012). «Chapter 1: Pastoral Practices in Transition». Pastoral practices in High Asia. Springer. p. 2. ISBN 978-94-007-3846-1.

[2] «Baillie, Kenneth; Simpson, Alistair. "Altitude Tutorials - Altitude Sickness". Apex (Altitude Physiology Expeditions). Archived from the original on 9 January 2010. Retrieved 26 January 2010.». Falta la |url= (ayuda)

[3] Keay, John (1983) When Men and Mountains Meet ISBN 0-7126-0196-1; p. 153

[:0-4] Zemp, M; Roer, I; Kääb, A; Hoelzle, M; Paul, F; Haeberli, W (2008). Global Glacier Changes: facts and figures. UNEP, World Glacier Monitoring Service.

[5] Li, Cai (2003). The Yak (second edition). FAO.

[6] Wiener, Gerald (2003). FAO, ed. The Yak (second edition).

[7] Carralero Benítez, Santiago J. (2015). Landscape after Disaster. Adaptation and Resilience to Cultural Change among Gyêgu Tibetans (Master Thesis). UNED.

[8] Grubb, P. (2005). "Order Artiodactyla". In Wilson, D.E.; Reeder, D.M. Mammal Species of the World: A Taxonomic and Geographic Reference (3rd ed.). Johns Hopkins University Press. p. 691. ISBN 978-0-8018-8221-0.

[9] Molden, David (2016). «Foreword». Yak on the move. ICIMOD. p. V.

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