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Location: Southern Asia, between China and India
Geographic coordinates: 28 00 N, 84 00 E
Map references: Asia
Area:
total: 140,800 sq km
land: 136,800 sq km
water: 4,000 sq km
Area - comparative: slightly larger than Arkansas
Land boundaries:
total: 2,926 km
border countries: China 1,236 km, India 1,690 km
Coastline: 0 km (landlocked)
Maritime claims: none (landlocked)
Climate: varies from cool summers and severe winters in
north to subtropical summers and mild winters in south
Terrain: Terai or flat river plain of the Ganges in south,
central hill region, rugged Himalayas in north
Elevation extremes:
lowest point: Kanchan Kalan 70 m
highest point: Mount Everest 8,850 m (1999 est.)
Natural resources: quartz, water, timber, hydropower, scenic
beauty, small deposits of lignite, copper, cobalt, iron ore
Land use:
arable land: 17%
permanent crops: 0%
permanent pastures: 15%
forests and woodland: 42%
other: 26% (1993 est.)
Irrigated land: 8,500 sq km (1993 est.)
Natural hazards: severe thunderstorms, flooding, landslides,
drought, and famine depending on the timing, intensity, and duration
of the summer monsoons
Environment - current issues: deforestation (overuse of
wood for fuel and lack of alternatives); contaminated water (with
human and animal wastes, agricultural runoff, and industrial effluents);
wildlife conservation; vehicular emissions
Environment - international agreements:
party to: Biodiversity, Climate Change, Desertification,
Endangered Species, Hazardous Wastes, Law of the Sea, Marine Dumping,
Nuclear Test Ban, Ozone Layer Protection, Tropical Timber 83, Tropical
Timber 94, Wetlands
signed, but not ratified: Marine Dumping, Marine Life Conservation
Geography - note: landlocked; strategic location between
China and India; contains eight of world's 10 highest peaks
Geography
Located at the Southern Asia, between China and India is Nepal.
Geographic coordinates is 28 00 N, 84 00 E. And the total area is
about 140,800 sq. km while the land area is 136, 800 sq. km .The
border countries from Nepal are China 1,236 km and India 1,690 km
.
Terrain in the lowest point is Kanchan Kalan that is 70 m, and the
highest point is Mount Everest about 8,848 m . Natural resources
are, quartz, water, timber, hydropower potential, scenic beauty,
small deposits of lignite, copper, cobalt, and iron ore.
Current issues in the country of Nepal are the almost total dependence
on wood for fuel and cutting down trees to expand agricultural land
without replanting has resulted in widespread deforestation, soil
erosion, water pollution.
Geographic condition of Nepal is landlocked, a strategic location
between China and India,and also contains eight of world's 10 highest
peaks.
Climate
In the high mountain ranges, temperatures remain cold all year and
snow covers the mountains. In the Tarai and the Kathmandu Valley,
summer (April:September) is hot and rainy, and winter (November:February)
is cool. Monsoon season is mid-June to mid:September.
Nepal is a country in south-central Asia. The highest mountain
range in the world--the Himalaya--and a region of hills and valleys
cover about 80 per cent of Nepal. The Tarai (or Terai)--a flat,
fertile river plain along Nepal's border with India--covers the
rest of the country.
Kathmandu is the capital
of Nepal and its largest city. Mount Everest, the highest mountain
in the world, rises 8,848 metres above sea level in the Himalaya
on Nepal's border with Tibet, a region that is part of China.
In 1951, the Nepalese monarch ended the century-old system of rule
by hereditary premiers and instituted a cabinet system of government.
Reforms in 1990 established a multiparty democracy within the framework
of a constitutional monarchy.
Nepal
GEOGRAPHY
Location and Size: Landlocked between China and
India; total land area 147,181 square kilometers.
Topography: Mountainous and hilly, although with
physical diversity. Three broad physiographic areas run laterally--lowland
Tarai Region in south; central lower mountains and hills constituting
Hill Region; high Himalayas, with 8,796-meters-high Mount Everest
and other peaks forming Mountain Region in north. Of total land
area, only 20 percent cultivatable. Deforestation severe problem;
by 1988 forests covered approximately 30 percent of land area.
Climate: Five climatic zones based on altitude
range from subtropical in south, to cool summers and severe winters
in north. Annual rainfall with seasonal variations depending on
monsoon cycle, which provides 60 to 80 percent of total annual rainfall;
2,500 millimeters in eastern part of country; 1,420 millimeters
around Kathmandu; 1,000 millimeters in western Nepal.
Data as of September 1991
Nepal
GEOGRAPHY, NEPAL
The Land
Sandwiched between two Asian giants--China and India--Nepal traditionally
has been characterized as "a yam caught between two rocks." Noted
for its majestic Himalayas, which in Sanskrit means the abode of
snow, Nepal is very mountainous and hilly. Its shape is roughly
rectangular, about 650 kilometers long and about 200 kilometers
wide, and comprises a total of 147,181 square kilometers of land.
It is slightly larger than Bangladesh or the state of Arkansas.
Nepal is a landlocked country, surrounded by India on three sides
and by China's Xizang Autonomous Region (Tibet) to the north. It
is separated from Bangladesh by an approximately fifteenkilometer
-wide strip of India's state of West Bengal, and from Bhutan by
the eighty-eight-kilometer-wide Sikkim, also an Indian state. Such
a confined geographical position is hardly enviable. Nepal is almost
totally dependent on India for transit facilities and access to
the sea--that is, the Bay of Bengal--even for most of the goods
coming from China.
For a small country, Nepal has great physical diversity, ranging
from the Tarai Plain--the northern rim of the Gangetic Plain situated
at about 300 meters above sea level in the south--to the almost
8,800-meter-high Mount Everest, locally known as Sagarmatha (its
Nepali name), in the north. From the lowland Tarai belt, landforms
rise in successive hill and mountain ranges, including the stupendous
rampart of the towering Himalayas, ultimately reaching the Tibetan
Plateau beyond the Inner Himalayas. This rise in elevation is punctuated
by valleys situated between mountain ranges. Within this maze of
mountains, hills, ridges, and low valleys, elevational (altitudinal)
changes rersulted in ecological variations.
Nepal commonly is divided into three broad physiographic areas:
the Mountain Region, the Hill Region, and the Tarai Region . All
three parallel each other, from east to west, as continuous ecological
belts, occasionally bisected by the country's river systems. These
ecological regions were divided by the government into development
sectors within the framework of regional development planning.
The rhythm of life in Nepal, as in most other parts of monsoonal
Asia, is intricately yet intrinsically intertwined with its physical
environment. As scholar Barry Bishop learned from his field research
in the Karnali region in the northwest, the livelihood patterns
of Nepal are inseparable from the environment.
Data as of September 1991
Nepal
The Mountain Region
The Mountain Region (called Parbat in Nepali) is situated at 4,000
meters or more above sea level to the north of the Hill Region.
The Mountain Region constitutes the central portion of the Himalayan
range originating in the Pamirs, a high altitude region of Central
Asia. Its natural landscape includes Mount Everest and the other
seven of the world's ten highest peaks, which are the legendary
habitat of the mythical creature, the yeti, or abominable snowman.
In general, the snow line occurs between 5,000 and 5,500 meters.
The region is characterized by inclement climatic and rugged topographic
conditions, and human habitation and economic activities are extremely
limited and arduous. Indeed, the region is sparsely populated, and
whatever farming activity exists is mostly confined to the low-lying
valleys and the river basins, such as the upper Kali Gandaki Valley.
In the early 1990s, pastoralism and trading were common economic
activities among mountain dwellers. Because of their heavy dependence
on herding and trading, transhumance was widely practiced. While
the herders moved their goths (temporary animal shelters)
in accordance with the seasonal climatic rhythms, traders also migrated
seasonally between highlands and lowlands, buying and selling goods
and commodities in order to generate muchneeded income and to secure
food supplies.
Data as of September 1991
Nepal
The Hill Region
Situated south of the Mountain Region, the Hill Region (called
Pahar in Nepali) is mostly between 1,000 and 4,000 meters in altitude.
It includes the Kathmandu Valley, the country's most fertile and
urbanized area. Two major ranges of hills, commonly known as the
Mahabharat Lekh and Siwalik Range (or Churia Range), occupy the
region. In addition, there are several intermontane valleys. Despite
its geographical isolation and limited economic potential, the region
always has been the political and cultural center of Nepal, with
decision-making power centralized in Kathmandu, the nation's capital.
Because of immigration from Tibet and India, the hill ranges historically
have been the most heavily populated area. Despite heavy out-migration,
the Hill Region comprised the largest share of the total population
in 1991.
Although the higher elevations (above 2,500 meters) in the region
were sparsely populated because of physiographic and climatic difficulties,
the lower hills and valleys were densely settled. The hill landscape
was both a natural and cultural mosaic, shaped by geological forces
and human activity. The hills, sculpted by human hands into a massive
complex of terraces, were extensively cultivated.
Like the Mountain Region, the Hill Region was a food-deficit area
in the early 1990s, although agriculture was the predominant economic
activity supplemented by livestock raising, foraging, and seasonal
migrating of laborers. The vast majority of the households living
in the hills were land-hungry and owned largely pakho (hilly)
land. The poor economic situation caused by lack of sufficient land
was aggravated by the relatively short growing season, a phenomenon
directly attributable to the climatic impact of the region's higher
altitude. As a result, a hill farmer's ability to grow multiple
crops was limited. The families were forced to adapt to the marginality,
as well as the seasonality, of their environment, cultivating their
land whenever they could and growing whatever would survive. Bishop
has noted that "as crop productivity decreases with elevation, the
importance of livestock in livelihood pursuits . . . increases.
For many Bhotia [or Bhote] living in the highlands . . . animal
husbandry supplants agriculture in importance." During the slack
season, when the weather did not permit cropping, hill dwellers
generally became seasonal migrants, who engaged in wage labor wherever
they could find it to supplement their meager farm output. Dependence
on nonagricultural activities was even more necessary in the mountain
ecological belt.
Data as of September 1991
Nepal
The Tarai Region
In complete topographic contrast to the Mountain and Hill regions,
the Tarai Region is a lowland tropical and subtropical belt of flat,
alluvial land stretching along the Nepal-India border, and paralleling
the Hill Region. It is the northern extension of the Gangetic Plain
in India, commencing at about 300 meters above sea level and rising
to about 1,000 meters at the foot of the Siwalik Range. The Tarai
includes several valleys (dun), such as the Surkhet and
Dang valleys in western Nepal, and the Rapti Valley (Chitwan) in
central Nepal.
The word tarai, a term presumed to be derived from Persian,
means "damp," and it appropriately describes the region's humid
and hot climate. The region was formed and is fed by three major
rivers: the Kosi, the Narayani (India's Gandak River), and the Karnali.
A region that in the past contained malaria-infested, thick forests,
commonly known as char kose jhari (dense forests approximately
twelve kilometers wide), the Tarai was used as a defensive frontier
by Nepalese rulers during the period of the British Raj (1858-1947)
in India. In 1991 the Tarai served as the country's granary and
land resettlement frontier; it became the most coveted internal
destination for land-hungry hill peasants.
In terms of both farm and forest lands, the Tarai was becoming
Nepal's richest economic region. Overall, Tarai residents enjoyed
a greater availability of agricultural land than did other Nepalese
because of the area's generally flat terrain, which is drained and
nourished by several rivers. Additionally, it has the largest commercially
exploitable forests. In the early 1990s, however, the forests were
being increasingly destroyed because of growing demands for timber
and agricultural land.
Data as of September 1991
Nepal
Climate
Nepal has a great deal of variation in climate. Its latitude is
about the same as that of Florida, and a tropical and subtropical
climate exists in the Tarai Region. Outside the Tarai, however,
the climate is completely different. The remarkable differences
in climatic conditions are primarily related to the enormous range
of altitude within such a short north-south distance. The presence
of the east-west-trending Himalayan massifs to the north and the
monsoonal alteration of wet and dry seasons also greatly contribute
to local variations in climate. Scholar Sharad Singh Negi identifies
five climatic zones in Nepal based on altitude: the tropical and
subtropical zone of below 1,200 meters in altitude; the cool, temperate
zone of 1,200 to 2,400 meters in altitude; the cold zone of 2,400
to 3,600 meters in altitude; the subarctic climatic zone of 3,600
to 4,400 meters in altitude; and the arctic zone above 4,400 meters
in altitude. In terms of natural vegetational regimes or distribution
patterns, altitude again plays a significant role. Below 1,200 meters,
the dominant form of vegetation consists of tropical and subtropical
rain forests.
Altitude also affects annual rainfall or precipitation patterns.
Up to about 3,000 meters, annual rainfall totals increase as the
altitude increases; thereafter, annual totals diminish with increasing
altitude and latitude. In addition to this latitudinal differentiation
in rainfall, two other patterns can be discerned. First, given the
northwestward movement of the moisture-laden summer monsoon (June
to September), the amount of annual rainfall generally decreases
from east to west. However, there are certain pockets with heavy
annual rainfall totals, for example, the Pokhara Valley in central
Nepal. Second, the horizontal extension of hill and mountain ranges
creates a moist condition on southand eastfacing slopes whereas
it produces a major rain shadow on the northern sides of the slopes.
The aridity increases with altitude and latitude, especially on
the northern slopes, and reaches its climax in the inner Himalayan
region and on the Tibetan Plateau. Eastern Nepal receives approximately
2,500 millimeters of rain annually, the Kathmandu area about 1,420
millimeters, and western Nepal about 1,000 millimeters.
The towering Himalayas play a critical role, blocking the northwesterly
advances of moist, tropical air from the Bay of Bengal, and ultimately
leading to its conversion to rain in the summer. In the winter,
this range prevents the outbursts of cold air from Inner Asia from
reaching southern Nepal and northern India, thus ensuring warmer
winters in these regions than otherwise would be the case.
In addition, there are seasonal variations in the amount of rainfall,
depending on the monsoon cycle. Bishop divides the monsoon cycle
into four seasons: premonsoon, summer monsoon, postmonsoon, and
winter monsoon. The premonsoon season generally occurs during April
and May; it is characterized by the highest temperatures, reaching
40° C during the day in the Tarai Region and other lowlands.
The hills and mountains, however, remain cool.
The summer monsoon, a strong flow of moist air from the southwest,
follows the premonsoon season. For the vast majority of southern
Asians, including Nepalese, the term monsoon is synonymous
with the summer rainy season, which makes or breaks the lives of
hundreds of millions of farmers on the subcontinent. Even though
the arrival of the summer monsoon can vary by as much as a month,
in Nepal it generally arrives in early June, is preceded by violent
lightning and thunderstorms, and lasts through September, when it
begins to recede. The plains and lower Himalayas receive more than
70 percent of their annual precipitation during the summer monsoon.
The amount of summer monsoon rain generally declines from southeast
to northwest as the maritime wedge of air gradually becomes thinner
and dryer. Although the success of farming is almost totally dependent
on the timely arrival of the summer monsoon, it periodically causes
such problems as landslides; subsequent losses of human lives, farmlands,
and other properties (not to mention great difficulty in the movement
of goods and people); and heavy flooding in the plains. Conversely,
when prolonged breaks in the summer monsoon occur, severe drought
and famine often result.
The postmonsoon season begins with a slow withdrawal of the monsoon.
This retreat leads to an almost complete disappearance of moist
air by mid-October, thus ushering in generally cool, clear, and
dry weather, as well as the most relaxed and jovial period in Nepal.
By this time, the harvest is completed and people are in a festive
mood. The two biggest and most important Hindu festivals-- Dashain
and Tihar (Dipawali)--arrive during this period, about one month
apart . The postmonsoon season lasts until about December.
After the postmonsoon, comes the winter monsoon, a strong northeasterly
flow, which is marked by occasional, short rainfalls in the lowlands
and plains and snowfalls in the high-altitude areas. The amount
of precipitation resulting from the northeast land trade winds varies
considerably but increases markedly with elevation. The secondary
winter precipitation in the form of snowfalls in the Himalayas is
important for generating a sufficient volume of spring and summer
meltwaters, which are critical for irrigation in the lower hills
and valleys where agriculture predominates. Winter precipitation
is also are indispensable for the success of winter crops, such
as wheat, barley, and numerous vegetables.
Data as of September 1991
Nepal
The River System
Nepal can be divided into three major river systems from east to
west: the Kosi River, the Narayani River (India's Gandak River),
and the Karnali River . All ultimately become major tributaries
of the Ganges River in northern India. After plunging through deep
gorges, these rivers deposit their heavy sediments and debris on
the plains, thereby nurturing them and renewing their alluvial soil
fertility. Once they reach the Tarai Region, they often overflow
their banks onto wide floodplains during the summer monsoon season,
periodically shifting their courses. Besides providing fertile alluvial
soil, the backbone of the agrarian economy, these rivers present
great possibilities for hydroelectric and irrigation development.
India managed to exploit this resource by building massive dams
on the Kosi and Narayani rivers inside the Nepal border, known,
respectively, as the Kosi and Gandak projects . None of these river
systems, however, support any significant commercial navigation
facility. Rather, the deep gorges formed by the rivers represent
immense obstacles to establishing the broad transport and communication
networks needed to develop an integrated national economy. As a
result, the economy in Nepal has remained fragmented. Because Nepal's
rivers have not been harnessed for transportation, most settlements
in the Hill and Mountain regions remain isolated from each other.
As of 1991, trails remained the primary transportation routes in
the hills.
The eastern part of the country is drained by the Kosi River, which
has seven tributaries. It is locally known as the Sapt Kosi, which
means seven Kosi rivers (Tamur, Likhu Khola, Dudh, Sun, Indrawati,
Tama, and Arun). The principal tributary is the Arun, which rises
about 150 kilometers inside the Tibetan Plateau. The Narayani River
drains the central part of Nepal and also has seven major tributaries
(Daraudi, Seti, Madi, Kali, Marsyandi, Budhi, and Trisuli). The
Kali, which flows between the Dhaulagiri Himal and the Annapurna
Himal (Himal is the Nepali variation of the Sanskrit word Himalaya),
is the main river of this drainage system. The river system draining
the western part of Nepal is the Karnali. Its three immediate tributaries
are the Bheri, Seti, and Karnali rivers, the latter being the major
one. The Maha Kali, which also is known as the Kali and which flows
along the Nepal-India border on the west side, and the Rapti River
also are considered tributaries of the Karnali.
Data as of September 1991
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