The Greening of the Himalayas

Exploring Global Vegetation Index 1982-90

ABSTRACT

Amulya Ratna Tuladhar

Deforestation reports conjure an imagination of denuded Himalayas. Recent documentations of localized landscape recovery with trees suggest a regional scale of Himalayan greening. Is this hypothesis supported by time series data of weekly Global Vegetation Index (GVI)? In this paper, I note an increasing trend in GVI over 1982-90. This trend remains robust even when distortions due to inter-satellite Advanced Very High Resolution Radiomenter (AVHRR) sensors have been removed by limiting observations to NOAA-9 satellite sensors, for July 1985 to October 1988. Further, the GVI-increase trend is strongest for the remote