| |
Purpose
Mountains everywhere constitute a dominant
feature of the landscape and pose a challenge to human
endeavour. Since the dimension of human endeavour covered
in this survey is basically economic, there is minimal
treatment of mountain peaks and the exploits of alpinists.
The basic approach to this enquiry is to portray mountain
areas as composite entities encompassing both pedestals
and pinnacles. Much of current mountain research, whether
for scientific or application purposes, tends to be
either too sectoral or too area specific. Even in the
case of geography, a discipline supposed to study phenomena
of places, the recent emphasis is on behavioural aspects
without considering physical factors (Soffer 1982).
Unidisciplinary investigations may enrich systematic
knowledge, but their lack of areal context creates problems
in terms of comparability and replicability. Hence,
the rationale for a synthesis of diverse factors to
produce a general systems' overview for comparative
analysis. The main purpose of this study is to establish
a broad spatial framework for mountain areas in the
Asia-Pacific region. This has necessitated positioning
their physical, cultural, and economic aspects into
a holistic regional setting. Such a composite landscape
is based on description of the geological structure,
physiographic expression, natural environment, and human
occupancy. The output is a set of regional templates
of coherent spatial phenomena that facilitate the contextualisation
of specialised investigation and research.
 |
© Author |
1. What is a Mountain?
Mount Everest from the south. The highest peak in
the world at 8,848m peeps over Nuptse-Lhotse ridge
in Khumbu, Nepal. Strong westerly winds deflect
the cumulus clouds from the highest summits. The
alps in the foreground provide summer pasture for
yaks. |
The mountains of Asia are spread over
a vast area and an investigation of such dimensions
needs to reconcile the hierarchy of scale. In this context,
the three levels of building blocks visualised are:
(1) individual ranges as micro-components, (2) their
grouping as meso-regions, and (3) finally, the continent
as the macro-realm. The intermediate meso-level constitutes
the logical vantage point of convergence for micro-analysis
and macro-synthesis. Therefore, the focus of this study
is on the regional level.
The next six chapters provide a description
of Asian mountain and hill ranges according to geographic
grouping. There is an obvious imbalance in information
about the regions owing to the lack of access to publications
about areas outside the Himalayas. Moreover, there is
a greater amount of literature on the Himalayas than
on other areas because the region has a longer history
than the other mountain regions of Asia in terms of
exploration and adventure. Surfing the Internet yielded
some information, but this was mainly on tourism and
mountaineering rather than about scientific facts. As
an example, the Asia-Pacific section of IUCN's `The
Regional Mountain Profiles' includes 59 mountains of
Asia but, of these, 42 are ranges, 11 individual peaks,
and six are given by territorial names in Indonesia
(IUCN 1988). Hence, providing balanced information about
different areas of this region meant pruning out materials
on the Himalayas and fleshing out information on other
mountain areas through map interpretation.
The survey describes over 110 mountain/hill
ranges spread over 37 countries. Since demographic information
and economic (statistical) indicators follow administrative/political
units, it was not possible during this exercise to disaggregate
these by mountain areas. The emphasis, therefore, has
been on giving a qualitative account of selected salient
features. Finally, mountain areas provide a refuge for
relict cultures. This is apparent from the mountain
glossary (Appendix I) of indigenous terms for physical
features and land use which contains terms from 35 languages.
|
