EPOW - Ecology Picture of the Week

Mount Everest (left), Mount Makalu (right)
Himalayas, Nepal

Explanation:  Mount Everest is famous for its extreme elevation and amazing vistas.  But from an ecological viewpoint, the regional landscape of the Himalayas is surprisingly diverse, being home to snow leopards, red pandas, yaks, musk deer, black bears, langur monkeys, martens, foxes, wolves, and other wildlife.  

The Nepalese word for Mount Everest is Sagarmatha, and in fact Mount Everest is but one part of Sagarmatha National Park, a UNESCO World Heritage site established in 1979 and the highest national park in the world.  

The broader landscape area of Sagarmatha includes the world's tallest wind-swept and ice-covered Himalayan peaks.  It also includes lower forested zones of birches, junipers, blue pines, firs, bamboos, and rhododendrons, and a higher zone of dwarf shrubs up to tree line at about 5,570 m (18,690 ft).  

However, the beauty of the Himalayan landscapes can be loved to death.  Studies have indicated that the alpine zone of Sagarmatha National Park has been severely degraded the last three decades from poorly managed tourism.  Alpine plants have been overharvested for firewood and overgrazed, and the thin, delicate soil has eroded.  As a result, in 2004 the local Sherpas organized a conservation project called "Community-based Conservation and Restoration of the Everest Alpine Zone."
  

Information:
     Byers, Alton.  2005.  Contemporary human impacts on alpine ecosystems in the Sagarmath (Mt. Everest) National Park, Khumbu, Nepal. Annals of the Association of American Geographers 95(1):112-140. 

About this image:
     This image is a panorama of several separate photos I took on an exceptionally clear day as I flew along the southern base of the Himalayas from Delhi to Guwahati, Assam, India.