The Main Central Thrust shear zone is the dominant crustal thickening feature in the Himalayas, largely responsible for the extreme relief and mass wasting of the range. Along the Bhagirathi River in NW India, the Main Central Thrust is several kilometers thick and separates high-grade gneisses of the Greater Himalayan Crystallines from Lesser Himalayan metasedimentary rocks. Th-Pb ion micropro...

Recent intensive samplings carried out across the mountainous regions of El Pinal (Puebla, Mexico) have provided new insights into the main environmental factors that affect the geographic distribution of the scarabaeinae beetles of the Trans-Mexican Volcanic Belt above 2500 m a.s.l. This study is part of an ongoing project investigating the diversity and biogeography of copro-necrophagous beet...

I review the current status of Asiatic black bear (Ursus thibetanus) and Himalayan brown bear (Ursus arctos) in India based on a questionnaire, interviews, and a literature survey. The Himalayan region and the hills of northeastern India probably support one of the largest populations of Asiatic black bear in Asia. Asiatic black bears live in forested mountain habitats (1,200-3,300 m) in the st...

The mythological motif of the Cosmic Hunt is peculiar to Northern and Central Eurasia and for the Americas but seems to be absent in other parts of the globe. Two distinct Eurasian versions demonstrate North-American parallels at the level of minor details which could be explained only by particular historical links between corresponding traditions. The first version (three stars of the handle ...

Controversy about the current state and future evolution of Himalayan glaciers has been stirred up by erroneous statements in the fourth report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change1,2. Variable retreat rates3–6 and a paucity of glacial mass-balance data7,8 make it difficult to develop a coherent picture of regional climate-change impacts in the region. Here, we report remotely-sense...

The interplay between topography and Indian summer monsoon circulation profoundly controls precipitation distribution, sediment transport, and river discharge along the Southern Himalayan Mountain Front (SHF). The Higher Himalayas form a major orographic barrier that separates humid sectors to the south and arid regions to the north. During the Indian summer monsoon, vortices transport moisture...

decompression to achieve the same result appear to require extreme The Manaslu granite is the most studied of the dozen or so plutons conditions not permitted by available geological constraints. that make up the High Himalayan leucogranite belt. The inferred relationship of the Manaslu granite with important Himalayan tectonic structures has inspired repeated attempts to determine its crystall...

[1] Orogenic structure appears to be partially controlled by the addition to and removal of material from the mountain belt by tectonic accretion and geomorphic erosion, respectively. We developed a coupled erosion-deformation model for orogenic wedges that are in erosional steady state and deform at their Coulomb failure limit. Erosional steady state is reached when all material introduced int...

The Yadong cross structure (YCS), occurring at ~89°30' east longitude in the Himalaya, is the largest across-strike discontinuity in the geologic structure and topography of the High Himalaya between the Himalayan syntaxes. It is manifest by a plan view left offset of the topographic crest of the range and a coincident, apparent, left strike offset of the South Tibetan Detachment System (STDS) ...