PHOTOGRAMMETRIC ENGINEERING & REMOTE SENSING
July 2014
601
By
J
ohn
A
ll
, N
arcisa
P
ricope
,
and
K
amal
H
umagain
The goal of our work in the Himalayas
is to document changes in high
mountain ecosystems as they
respond to the integrated effects
of effects of multiple stressors,
including human land use decisions
and climate variability and change.
in order to continue gathering the data necessary for our glacial
pollution and stability research. However, while collecting snow
samples near the tent at approximately 20,000 feet, the author
(All) fell deep into a crevasse and only through extreme good for-
tune was able to climb out and survive. These twin tragedies high-
light the risk involved in mountain research. But the Himalayas
provide water for two billion people and so the American Climber
Science Program will continue our work in the glaciers of the
world – albeit with even more heightened awareness of safety in
these regions.
For this particular Highlight Article, while our losses are still
poignant we will shift focus
to the dynamics of vegetation
surrounding Mt. Everest and
how warfare, tourism, and
climate variability and change
are impacting these high alpine
ecosystems (Figure 1). This
is the research that our team
continued after the accidents
and is the research that has
the greatest impact on local
livelihoods for Sherpas and other
mountain peoples of the world.
The ACSP spent 2009/10 in Nepal with funding from a Fulbright
grant working with Nepalese collaborators and graduate students
in high alpine environments. We taught them how to integrate
remote sensing data with the field collection that had traditionally
been taught at the country’s major research university – Tribhuvan
University in Kathmandu. We took students into the field in
Sagarmatha National Park (the location of Mt. Everest) and the
adjacent Makalu Barun National Park for the bulk of our work
but also collected data in Langtang National Park, Annapurna
ConservationArea, ChitwanNational Park, ManasluConservation
Area, and Shivapuri National Park (Figures 2 and 3). We
established a new Geoinformatics Lab at the Central Department
of Botany (CDB) that was integrated with the National Herbarium.
Figure 1: The American Climber
Science Program — Nepal
emblem.
We also worked with the CDB, the National Trust for Nature
Conservation (NTNC), the Ethnobotanical Society of Nepal
(ESON), and local CBOs (Community-Based Organizations)
to gather vegetation data across several of the protected areas
in the mountainous regions of the country and to assist with
stakeholder interviews and livelihood diversification activities
(Figure 4). This program led to the creation of a new CBO called
Research Solutions Nepal that teaches geoinformatics to local
stakeholders for use in environmental research.
The goal of our work in the Himalayas is to document
changes in high mountain ecosystems as they respond to
the integrated effects of multiple stressors, including human
land use decisions and climate variability and change. Local,
subsistence-based resource users face a variety of challenges
as harsh environmental conditions and poverty weaken
community forest protections and imperil biodiversity. Non-
timber forest products and ethnobotanical resource protection
and management in the face of climate change are very difficult
in this region due to the extreme poverty and a long term civil
war that affected large regions of the country.
Until recently, Nepal was ruled by a monarchy but, in 1996 a
Maoist Communist group began a civil war that lasted ten years
ixels with
P
eople
to
E
xamine
al
C
hanges
in
the
M
t
. E
verest
pal
