The understanding of the High Asia region: a crucial mission to protect the planet
Together with the Amazonian basin and the Arctic, High Asia is one of the most relevant areas in our planet from an environmental perspective as it contains the largest plateaus and the highest mountains in the world as well as its greatest concentration, highlighting fourteen mountains with more of 8,000 meters high, all of which has originated the largest fluvial network on Earth, extending throughout Asia and somehow giving benefit to near half of world population.
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Due to its environmental, cultural and biological importance, but also because of its fragility, High Asia requires a special attention and demands a high level of protection on the part of those concerned governments, civil society organizations, cutural institutions, specialized UN agencies, and international foundations. For the moment, attention have been only given to political and more scientific issues, but not, or only partially, to the cultural aspects related to their original inhabitants as well as their economic upliftment considering an integrated and long-term sustainable development model following their own criteria.
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Alpine Tundra: a particularly productive ecosystem between cryosphere and forest
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Alpine tundra is a type of biome found on high altitude, which is too cold and windy to support tree growth. Alpine tundra occurs in mountains worldwide, and the climate there is similar to polar climates. The dry adiabatic lapse rate is 10 °C per km of elevation or altitude. The flora of the alpine tundra is characterized by dwarf shrubs close to the ground. Because the habitat of alpine vegetation is subject to intense radiation, wind, cold, snow, and ice; it grows close to the ground and consists mainly of perennial grasses, sedges, and forbs. They have much more root and rhizome biomass than that of shoots, leaves, and flowers. Large regions of alpine tundra occur in the Himalayas in Asia, American Cordillera in North and South America, the Alps, the Scandinavian mountains and Pyrenees of Europe, the Caucasus Mountains, the Rift Mountains of Africa, and a large portion of the Tibetan Plateau.
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High Asia is better understood as a three dimensional region, composed by:
An ecosystem dimension, defined by the Alpine Tundra ecosystem, a grasslands belt containing very nutritious alpine pastures forming an altitudinal gradient between 2500-5500 mts, characterized by oxygen scarcity, high-intensity solar radiation and short and soft summers, where agriculture is limited to some few crops, that contains the World´s highest mountain ranges, with the largest concentration of high peaks and an unique altitudinal belt up to 7000 mts. high and keeps a 17 % of total glaciers and icecaps on Earth, generating the World´s largest fluvial network that influences the lives of about 40 per cent of the world’s population.
An environmental dimension, including a socio-environmental treasure unique in the world, by combining three biodiversity hotspots placed in high-mountain areas (Himalaya, Mountain of Southwest China and Central Asia Mountains). dominated by two animal species: snow leopard, symbol of wildlife protection, and yak, symbolizing the long-term interaction process between nature and human communities, that works as the lung for the overpopulated and overpolluted regions of South and South-weast Asia, by re-generating the pollution produced in the lowland areas and contains many protected areas on high-altitude with different levels of protection, encompassing extensive regions of Bhutan, China, Nepal, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, and Mongolia, northern areas of India, Pakistan, and Afghansitan, and some parts of the Russian republics of Tuva and Altai. propitiating the monsoon rains and it is a key piece in the terrestrial athmospheric circulation
A socio-cultural dimension formed by a major cultural crossroad shaped by ancestral lond-distance trading routes (Silk Road, Tea Horse Route, etc.), a multi-religious and multi-cultural area by connecting cultural spaces where three of the most important religions have coexisted: Islam, Buddhism, and Hinduism, professed by a wide diversity of well-adapted indigenous high-mountain, a great variety of communities involved in barter systems, including food, material and cultural goods, and indigenous knowledge, a particular pastoral landscapes that, similarly to the Eurasian taiga (reindeer) and the Andean region (camelids), has produced its own animal ruminant species, producing, as in the other two ecosystesm, a specific pan-community around a totem animal: the yak in a particular agriculture area, where barley dominates over other crops, which has propitiated the wide spreading of a food staple called "Tsampa", which It has generated millennial oral traditions, as Manas, Janggar and Gesar, as well as its own history, poety, handicraft industry, dance and music, and line of thinking.
An environmental dimension, including a socio-environmental treasure unique in the world, by combining three biodiversity hotspots placed in high-mountain areas (Himalaya, Mountain of Southwest China and Central Asia Mountains). dominated by two animal species: snow leopard, symbol of wildlife protection, and yak, symbolizing the long-term interaction process between nature and human communities, that works as the lung for the overpopulated and overpolluted regions of South and South-weast Asia, by re-generating the pollution produced in the lowland areas and contains many protected areas on high-altitude with different levels of protection, encompassing extensive regions of Bhutan, China, Nepal, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, and Mongolia, northern areas of India, Pakistan, and Afghansitan, and some parts of the Russian republics of Tuva and Altai. propitiating the monsoon rains and it is a key piece in the terrestrial athmospheric circulation
A socio-cultural dimension formed by a major cultural crossroad shaped by ancestral lond-distance trading routes (Silk Road, Tea Horse Route, etc.), a multi-religious and multi-cultural area by connecting cultural spaces where three of the most important religions have coexisted: Islam, Buddhism, and Hinduism, professed by a wide diversity of well-adapted indigenous high-mountain, a great variety of communities involved in barter systems, including food, material and cultural goods, and indigenous knowledge, a particular pastoral landscapes that, similarly to the Eurasian taiga (reindeer) and the Andean region (camelids), has produced its own animal ruminant species, producing, as in the other two ecosystesm, a specific pan-community around a totem animal: the yak in a particular agriculture area, where barley dominates over other crops, which has propitiated the wide spreading of a food staple called "Tsampa", which It has generated millennial oral traditions, as Manas, Janggar and Gesar, as well as its own history, poety, handicraft industry, dance and music, and line of thinking.
