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Published April 25, 1997 | public
Journal Article

Climatic Limits on Landscape Development in the Northwestern Himalaya

Abstract

The interaction between tectonism and erosion produces rugged landscapes in actively deforming regions. In the northwestern Himalaya, the form of the landscape was found to be largely independent of exhumation rates, but regional trends in mean and modal elevations, hypsometry (frequency distribution of altitude), and slope distributions were correlated with the extent of glaciation. These observations imply that in mountain belts that intersect the snowline, glacial and periglacial processes place an upper limit on altitude, relief, and the development of topography irrespective of the rate of tectonic processes operating.

Additional Information

© 1997 American Association for the Advancement of Science. Received 17 December 1996; accepted 10 March 1997. Support for this research was provided by NSF (grants EAR 9205501 and EAR 9220056), National Geographic Research, and NASA. We thank B. L. Isacks and E. J. Fielding for contributions to the DEM analysis, and two anonymous reviewers for their comments. The hospitality and support of the staff at Victoria University, Wellington, are also acknowledged.

Additional details

Created:
August 19, 2023
Modified:
October 18, 2023