This thesis seeks to understand the coexistence that occurs between people and snow leopards on the roof of the world. Within a political ecology framework, it aims to show how various social and economic factors can influence this coexistence and promote the conservation of Himalayan species and ecosystems. In particular, the thesis addresses the twin assumptions that access to assets, via more diverse livelihoods, and access to influence, via decentralised conservation governance, will improve coexistence. The study opens with an assessment of household livelihoods and then compares them between two iconic but contrasting Protected Areas. The thesis then assesses: (i) knowledge of and attitudes to snow leopards; (ii) attitudes to their conservation; (iii) household livestock losses to snow leopards; and (iv) conflicts between people and snow leopard conservation. Additionally, perceptions of several proposed mitigation methods are also examined. The political ecology framework employs access theory, the Sustainable Livelihoods model and a mixed-methods approach. Using systematic sampling, a quantitative questionnaire was administered to 705 households at two sites in the Nepal Himalayas: Sagarmatha National Park, with a centralised governance model, and Annapurna Conservation Area, with a decentralised one. Seventy qualitative interviews were also collected for cross-methods triangulation. Multiple and logistic regression models were the main form of statistical analyses. Access to tourism income, and larger household size, best explained livelihoods scores. Attitudes to snow leopards were best explained by attitudes to their conservation and numbers of livestock owned per household. Attitudes to snow leopard conservation depended on perceptions of snow leopards and household livelihoods. Perceptions of conflict with snow leopards and their conservation was related to the number of livestock lost by any source of mortality. A number of variables explained attitudes to the proposed mitigation measures, including gender, livelihood strategies, livestock numbers and support for snow leopard conservation. In conclusion, access to assets and access to influence do shape human coexistence with snow leopards and their conservation, albeit in more nuanced ways than anticipated.

The Himalaya provide the most significant example of present-day orogenesis and consequently have been extensively studied to gain an understanding of the principle controls on the response of the crust to continental collision. However, our understanding of the prograde metamorphic evolution of the orogen remains poor. This thesis builds on recent advances in the study of PTt paths, using garnet chronometry, to better constrain the thennobarometric evolution of the Garhwal section of the Indian Himalaya. Results show that the metamorphic core of the Garhwal Himalaya - the High Himalayan Crystalline Series (HHCS) - records a complex, continuous prograde thermal history from initial burial -10 Ma after continental collision at -50 Ma, up to cooling and exhumation at 20-16 Ma BP. PT paths obtained from garnets indicate that prograde metamorphism occurred during crustal thickening and "peak" thermobarometric estimates show that the presently exposed HHCS records temperatures of -700 °C throughout the section accompanied by a decrease in pressures from --13 kbar at the base to -6 kbar at the top. However, chronometric information shows that reorganisation of the orogenic wedge resulted in the juxtaposition of rocks which attained different PT conditions at different times and places during orogenesis. Additionally, temperatures were sufficient in the early stages of orogenesis for the development of small leucogranitic bodies to form by fluid-present melting. The HHCS in Garhwal, therefore, cannot be considered as a single coherent crustal slice. Furthermore, the continued reorganisation of the orogen since collision also means the heat generation within the overthickened orogenic wedge is sufficient for anatexis of the crust to form the well-studied melts intruding the upper levels of the HHCS. However, interpretation of the results is complicated by the isotopic systematics involved in garnet chronometry and by the role of small inclusions with high concentrations of the critical elements of- Nd, Pb, Sr. The systematics of the Sm-Nd system in garnet has been investigated by a comparison of concentrations obtained insitu by LA-ICP-MS with those obtained by isotope dilution. Results show that while such inclusions can pose a problem to chronometry, their effects can be identified and constrained. In the course of such work data was obtained on the trace-element zonation in garnet, which acts as a monitor of the chemical evolution of the rock. While the controls on such zonation are still poorly understood the data presented here emphasise the importance of fractionation of the chemical system from which the garnet grows by both accessory minerals and by garnet itself. Furthermore, different minerals fractionate distinctly different elements this can be recognised in the trace-element zonation preserved in garnet.

Palaeoglacier margins from the Zanskar Range of the north-western Indian Himalaya are reconstructed through geomorphological mapping and sedimentology. These are dated ilsing Optically Stimulated Luminescence (OSL) techniques on quartz extracted from related fluvioglacial and lacustrine deposits. A glaciated palaeosurface with broad, gentle slopes >280m above river level and high grade metamorphic erratics represents the oldest and most extensive glaciation, the Chandra Stage. This formed an ice-cap with its ice-shed to the south over the High Himalaya. A change from broad glacial troughs to narrow V -shaped gorges along with large subdued moraine ridges and drift/erratic limits defines an extensive valley glaciation, the Batal Stage, with its maximum close to -78.0±12.3ka BP (Oxygen Isotope Stage (OIS) 4). Distinct sets of moraine ridges represent a less extensive glaciation, the Kulti Stage, which is dated to shortly after the global Last Glacial Maximum (OIS 2) and a minor advance, the Sonapani, is represented by sharp crested moraine ridges < 2km from current ice bodies. The change in glacier extent and style from the Chandra Stage to the later glaciations may be related to uplift of more southerly ranges blocking monsoon precipitation and incision of the landscape such that ice reached lower altitudes over shorter horizontal distances. Batal and Kulti Stage Glacier Elevation Indexes (GEls) calculated for this and adjacent areas increase from south-west to the north-east, but decrease again towards the Indus valley, reflecting attenuation of the south-westerly monsoon and possible channelling of westerly depressions along the broad upper Indus valley. GEl values were depressed by ~500m during the Batal Stage and -300m during the Kulti Stage. Six new OSL age estimates from the Zanskar Range greatly improve the glacial chronology of the north-west Himalaya and reinforce the emerging asynchrony between this region and the Central and Eastern Himalaya, which experienced its maximum glaciation during OIS 2 rather than OIS 4. Improved glacier mass balance data, palaeoclimatic proxy data for the summer monsoon and particularly the winter westerlies, and numerical age estimates from Himalayan glaciers are required to explain this asynchronous maximum.

Weather – cold, wet, hot and windy – pervades life, material and social. So present and obvious as to provide a challenge for research, material though ephemeral too, weather breaks boundaries and refuses categorisation. While night becomes day, the cold season warms up over weeks and annual patterns are changing on a scale of years, practices in the face of weather transitions are themselves shifting. Based on ten months of fieldwork in the small village of Gau in the Pahari Indian Himalayas this thesis interrogates the saliencies and permeations of weather in people’s lives. It investigates how people intra-act (Barad 2007) with the weather, though practices, infrastructures and relationships with others. My approach argues for the validity of weather as a means by which to learn about socio-material lives. Pahari villagers live and act within the weather that moves around them. They are subject to, but also modify, their thermal environment. Through housing, clothing and tools such as the fire and the fan they affect the impact of the weather as it meets their bodies, but also daily patterns of movement are coloured by weather considerations. This work views weather in relation to health practices (such as refraining from working during the rain so as not to fall ill), for care of others (such as domestic bovines), for house-building and hospitable relationship-building among neighbours, for negotiation of landslide-fraught access roads to elsewhere and for understandings of pollution in the air. This focus on weather is intended to connect dots for people working on climate change, both within and beyond anthropology, and to contribute to discussions in areas including human-animal relations, health and illness and housing.

The effects of enhanced greenhouse gas concentrations on Earth’s climate are well understood. However, the impacts of anthropogenic aerosol particles, in particular due to the many aerosol-cloud indirect feedback mechanisms are not fully or even explicitly quantified as yet. This PhD seeks to contribute to improve our knowledge and understanding of aerosol – precipitation interactions over the Nepal Himalayas region and their consequences for precipitation patterns there. The research was carried out using the cloud-resolving Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) model through a series of sensitivity studies and supported by literature reviews of satellite and field observations, although the latter are sparse. To complement the modelling studies, from March to December 2011, aerosols and surface meteorology were also continuously measured at Nagarkot (Lat: 27.7°N, Lon: 85.5° E, Alt: 1900m), Nepal, located in the eastern flank of a bowl shaped Kathmandu valley. The location was chosen to provide a representative vertical profile of aerosol and the impact on topographical flows. Our results showed a unique pattern of diurnal pollution circulation within the valley with a morning and evening peak. The evening peak, which is higher than the morning peak is attributed to the light wind blowing through the valley carrying locally generated fresh evening pollution, further enhanced by re-circulations of aged pollutants through suppression of the mixing layers as suggested by a previous study at a different location. The morning peak is caused by calm wind conditions followed by the transitional growth of the nocturnal boundary layer. It is found that the thermally driven mountain – valley wind circulations are responsible for ventilation of pollutants. The WRF simulations showed that a sophisticated double moment bulk microphysics parameterization scheme performed best, which did not show any statistically significant difference compared to the observed data at 80% confidence interval using a Chi-squared goodness of best fit test. A sensitivity analysis of aerosol and temperature perturbations on the monsoon precipitation was conducted. We found that the model represented the first indirect effect reasonably well however, rainfall was not particularly sensitive to the aerosol perturbations used, due to the poorly documented role of the ice phase processes which assume a greater importance in this region due to the influence of topography and diurnal heating cycle. Further model studies focusing on chemical properties of aerosol and sensitivity of Ice Nuclei (IN) to precipitation in this region are recommended. In contrast, the effects of temperature perturbation were found to be significant, more so than the currently modelled aerosol indirect effects, suggesting that reduced frequency but intense rain events are likely over the Himalayas as the climate warms.

The Himalayan Mountain range encompasses an unparalleled landscape featuring some of the planet’s highest peaks, including Mount Everest. In the heart of this massive orographic barrier lies Nepal, sandwiched in the historically geostrategic position between the Tibetan plateau to the north and India in the south. Until recently, Nepalese and Tibetan populations remained poorly characterized genetically, partly because of their inaccessible geographical locations. In the present study, the genetic diversity of these two Himalayan populations is evaluated using different marker systems, including mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) and Short Tandem Repeats (STRs) in the autosomes as well as on the Y-chromosome (Y-STR). While autosomal STRs are distributed throughout the genome and are biparentally inherited, the Y-chromosome and mtDNA are haploid markers and provide the paternal and maternal histories of the population, respectively. Fifteen autosomal STR loci were typed in 341 unrelated individuals from three Nepalese populations (188), namely Tamang (45), Newar (66) and Kathmandu (77), and a general collection from Tibet (153). These samples were also sequenced for the mtDNA control region and all of them were subsequently assigned to 75 different mtDNA haplogroups and sub-haplogroups by screening their diagnostic sites in the coding region using Restriction Fragment Length Polymorphism analysis and/or sequencing, thus achieving an unprecedented level of resolution. The results from the autosomal and mtDNA data suggest a Northeast Asian origin for the Himalayan populations, with significant genetic influence from the Indian subcontinent in Kathmandu and Newar, corroborating our previous Y-chromosome study. In contrast, Tibet displays a limited Indian component, suggesting that the Himalayan massif acted as a natural barrier for gene flow from the south. The presence of ancient Indian mtDNA lineages in Nepal implies that the region may have been inhabited by the earliest settlers who initially populated South Asia. In addition, seventeen Y-STR loci were analyzed in 350 Tibetan males from three culturally defined regions of historical Tibet: Amdo (88), Kham (109) and U-Tsang (153). The results demonstrate that the 17 Y-STR loci studied are highly polymorphic in all the three Tibetan populations examined and hence are useful for forensic cases, paternity testing and population genetic studies.

Climate change is a growing problem for those living in the Himalayas, threatening water availability and livelihoods. This research seeks to explore the various factors contributing to water shortage and the factors leading to perceptions of water shortage in Himachal Pradesh, India. This thesis explores data collected from 50 interviews conducted in summer 2019 and seeks to understand why participants of these interviews indicated that they do not experience water shortage. The research highlights the importance of further research and needed action in terms of addressing and mitigating the impacts of climate change in the Himalayas of Himachal Pradesh.

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This diploma thesis is focused on primary education in India with own empirical case study of the village of Mulbeck in the region of Ladakh in the state of Jammu and Kashmir. Author explored the role of education in the lives of local residents and the function of the Spring Dales Public School in the specific context of the local cultural and natural environment. Own field research was realized through the author's stay in the village as a volunteer placement organized by an NGO Brontosauři in the Himalayas that supports the Spring Dale Public School. The collection of data took place during July 2017. The author conducted 31 semi-structured interviews with various local agents who are directly or indirectly involved in the school functioning. The interviews were analyzed using qualitative research methods. The findings from interviews suggested that both the access and perceived importance of education has change significantly, while it is not only considered as a major factor of a quality employment but of the general development of Mulbeck. This is related to structural changes in employment with more people looking for a work in the tertiary sector. Modernization and structural change, nevertheless, do not seem to weaken perceived importance of traditions and local culture but, on the...

High rates of soil loss and high sediment loads in rivers necessitate efficient monitoring and quantification methodologies so that effective land management strategies can be designed. Constructing a sediment budget is a useful approach to address these issues. Quantifying a sediment budget using classical field-based techniques, however, is labour intensive and expensive for poorly gauged, large drainage basins. The availability of global environmental datasets in combination with GIS techniques provides an opportunity for studying large basins. Following this approach, a framework is presented for constructing sediment budgets for large, data-sparse drainage basins, which is applied to the mountainous upper Indus River basin in northern Pakistan. The methodological framework consists of five steps: (1) analyzing hydro-climatological data for dividing the drainage basin into characteristic regions, and calculating sediment yields; (2) investigation of major controls on sediment yields; (3) identification and mapping of sediment source areas by spatially distributed modelling of erosional processes; (4) spatially distributed modelling of sediment yields; and (5) carrying out the sediment budget balance calculation at the basin outlet. Further analysis carried out on the Indus data has enabled a better understanding of sediment dynamics in the basin.<p> Analysis of the available hydro-climatological data indicates that the basin can be subdivided into three characteristic regions based on whether runoff production and subsequent sediment generation is controlled by temperature (Region 1, upper, glacierized sub-basins), precipitation caused by the monsoon and western disturbances (Region 3, lower sub-basins), or a combination of the two (Region 2, middle reach sub-basins). It is also demonstrated that contrary to the conventional model, the specific sediment yield increases markedly with drainage area along the Indus River. An investigation of major controls on specific sediment yield in the basin indicates that percent snow/ice cover is a major land cover control for specific sediment yield. Spatially distributed erosion modelling predictions indicate that 87% of the annual gross erosion takes place in the three summer months with greatest erosion potential concentrated in sub-basins with high relief and a substantial proportion of glacierized area. Lower erosion rates can be explained by the arid climate and low relief on the Tibetan Plateau, and by the dense vegetation and lower relief in the lower monsoon sub-region. The model predicts an average annual erosion rate of 3.2 mm/a or 868 Mt/a. Spatially distributed sediment yield predictions made with coupled models of erosion and sediment delivery indicate that the Indus sub-basins generally show an increase of sediment delivery ratio with basin area. The predicted annual basin sediment yield is 244 Mt/a and the overall sediment delivery ratio in the basin is calculated as 0.28. The long-term mean annual sediment budget, based on mass balance, is characterized by a gross erosion of 762.9, 96.7 and 8.4 Mt, and a gross storage of 551.4, 66.1, and 6.5 Mt in the upper, middle, and lower regions of the basin, respectively. The sediment budget indicates that the major sources of eroded sediment are located in the Karakoram, in particular in the Hunza basin. Substantial sediment storage occurs on the relatively flat Tibetan Plateau and the Indus River valley reach between Partab Bridge and Shatial. The presented framework for sediment budget construction requires relatively few data, mostly derived from global datasets. It therefore can be utilized for other ungauged or poorly gauged drainage basins of the world.