Green Glaciers: The Melting Grasslands of the Tibetan Plateau
31/07/10 12:18
An enormous amount of attention has been paid to the loss of the ancient glaciers in the Himalayas and across the Tibetan plateau. Their retreat and the loss of glacial mass have been tied to rising air temperatures, longer warm seasons, and shifting precipitation patterns. But while dramatic and newsworthy, the loss of glaciers does not have an 
immediate impact on most people and ecosystems in the region beyond dry-season flows. Glaciers represent old reservoirs of water that build up over decades, centuries, and even millennia. However, most of the liquid water resources in the Himalayas and plateau come from seasonally frozen rain, groundwater, and snow, which accumulate each winter and melt over the following spring and summer to enter the rivers, groundwater, and lakes of south and central Asia.
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