Mountain GIS: promoting geographic information and earth observation applications for the sustainable development of the Hindu Kush-Himalayan region

Abstract

The Hindu Kush-Himalayan (HKH) region, home to the largest concentration of glaciers outside of the polar region, is the ‘water-tower’ of Asia. The HKH mountain ecosystem provides life support services to almost a third of humanity. Many mountain issues such as management of water resources, climate change, biodiversity conservation and hazard mitigation are interconnected in nature and, therefore, need to be considered holistically. The relevance of geographic information (GI) and earth observation (EO) applications in supporting decision-making is being increasingly realised by technical experts, practitioners and policy makers. There is a growing need for generating spatial and temporal data to aid planning, management and policy formulation in the mountain context.