Quaternary glacial history of NW Garhwal, Central himalayas

The Quaternary glacial history of the Zanskar Range, north-west Indian Himalaya

“…is dated as older than 139.0± 12.5ka BP (Derbyshire et ai., 1984). The reliability of this age estimate, (Sharma and Owen, 1996), 59.1±8.5ka BP and 77.2±18ka BP (OSL) (Richards, 1999) respectively ( Fig. 1.14). Based on the dates published from Garwal and Lahul, Benn and Owen (1998) suggest that this glacial event reached its maximum extent at -30-60ka BP (OIS 3) when the Indian monsoon was relatively strong.…”

“…(E) Glacial record from Swat, Pakistan (Owen et al, 1992~ Richards. 1999 (F) Glacial record from {i'arhwal (Sharma and Owen, 1996) 23 Chapter 1, Introduction…”

Observations: Cryosphere

“…• In their review of glacial activity in the Garhwal Himalaya, report the Gangotri Glacier, which was earlier receding at a rate of around 26 m/year between 1935 and 1971 (Raina, 2003;Sharma and Owen, 1996;Naithani et al, 2001;Srivastava, 2003), has more recently shown a gradual decline in rate of recession, falling to 17 m/year for 1974-2004 and 12 m/year for (Kumar et al, 2008. The Dokriana Glacier maintained an overall constant rate of recession (around 16-18 m/year) between the years 1962 and 1995 (Dobhal et al, 2004).…”

Quaternary glaciation of the Himalayan–Tibetan orogen

“…Defining the ages of landforms and sediments throughout much of the HimalayanTibetan orogen has been particularly difficult because of the Shiraiwa, 1993;Sharma and Owen, 1996;Phillips et al, 2000;Richards et al, 2000a,b;Owen et al, 2001Owen et al, , 2002aOwen et al, ,b, 2003aOwen et al, ,b,c, 2005Owen et al, , 2006aSchäfer et al, 2002;Tsukamoto et al, 2002;Yi et al, 2002;Finkel et al, 2003;Zech et al, 2003Zech et al, , 2005Barnard et al, 2004aBarnard et al, ,b, 2006aMeriaux et al, 2004;Spencer and Owen, 2004;Chevalier et al, 2005;Abramowski et al, 2006;Colgan et al, 2006;Seong et al, 2007Seong et al, , 2008a. The red dots in part (A) highlight regions where TCN surface exposure dating has been undertaken.…”

“…They highlighted the considerable regional variation, which is the result of the influence of the two major climatic systems, the mid-latitude westerlies and the South Asian summer monsoon, plus the influence of strong topographic controls. Furthermore, there may be considerable local variability as highlighted by Sharma and Owen (1996) for the Garhwal Himalaya and Seong et al, (2008b) for Muztag Ata and Kongur Shan. Owen and Benn (2005) argue that even though there have been numerous studies of ELAs throughout the HimalayanTibetan orogen, the methods for reconstructing former ELAs vary considerably between studies.…”