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Joint Chinese-Indian team to study Himalayan glaciers
21 December 2006
Joint Chinese-Indian team to study Himalayan glaciers
(AP) A joint Indian-Chinese team plans to chart remote Himalayan glaciers that
scientists fear are rapidly melting because of global warming, threatening the
great rivers that give life to South Asia's fertile Gangetic Plain. The two
expeditions being planned as part of the project will take scientists into some
of the most remote and isolated regions of Tibet to explore the sources of the
Sutlej and Brahmaputra Rivers, said H.P.S. Ahluwalia, who runs the Indian
Mountaineering Foundation. "The melting of the ice sheets and the glaciers is a
crisis in the Himalayas", he said at a news conference with colleagues from
China's Institute of Geology and Geophysics, which is organising the Chinese
side of the project. Both expeditions are to get under way in September 2007.
The expedition teams plan to gather samples from the glaciers to try to
determine the rate at which they have been retreating over the last few decades.
One team is to explore the glaciers around Mount Kailash, looking for the source
of the Sutlej; the other will venture to the region around Mount Luenpo Kangri
to pinpoint the source of the Brahmaputra.
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