Table Of ContentGeography of the Physical Environment
U. C. Sharma · M. Datta · Vikas Sharma
Soils in the Hindu
Kush Himalayas
Management for Agricultural Land Use
Geography of the Physical
Environment
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U. C. Sharma M. Datta
• •
Vikas Sharma
Soils in the Hindu Kush
Himalayas
Management for Agricultural Land
Use
123
U. C. Sharma M. Datta
Division of Natural Resources Government Agricultural College
Management Indian Council of Agricultural
Indian Council of Agricultural Research and Principal
Research Kolkatta, West Bengal, India
Jammu, Jammu & Kashmir, India
Vikas Sharma
Division of Soil Science
and Agricultural Chemistry
Shere-Kashmir University
of Agricultural
Jammu, India
ISSN 2366-8865 ISSN 2366-8873 (electronic)
Geographyof the Physical Environment
ISBN978-3-031-11457-1 ISBN978-3-031-11458-8 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-11458-8
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Foreword by I. P. Abrol
Mountains cover more than 22% of the earth’s land area and are home to
around one billion people, or about 12% of the world’s population. Pro-
ducing crops and livestock in mountain environments can present many
difficult challenges. Compared to lowlands, highland farmers are faced with
shorter growing seasons, hostile climatic conditions, complex and variable
soils, high gradients, and greater distance to the markets. The soils are
usually less favorable, and the weather is more prone to extreme events that
can lead to sudden disasters. Hunger and malnutrition are widespread in the
Hindu Kush Himalayan (HKH) countries. In the HKH region, more than
30% of people face food insecurity and malnutrition. Eradication of hunger
and all forms of malnutrition is one of the main Sustainable Development
Goals (SDGs) and a core mandate of the Zero Hunger Goal (SDG2) of the
United Nations.
Mountain regions, despite their peculiarity, environmental sensitivity, and
inaccessibility, are quite significant for global sustainability as nearly 70%
of the world’s population depends on the mountains for the supply of
freshwater, sources of renewable energy, and rich biodiversity. Indigenous
communities who have adapted to living in mountain regions over thousands
of years have evolved a diversity of cultures that comprise traditional
resource development and environmental conservation practices. Such
communities have also developed a variety of farming and food systems that
can be adapted to cope with environmental changes, and a range of institu-
tions that have immense relevance and practical significance in ensuring food
and livelihood security for a large part of the world. However, mountains
have long been marginalized from the point of view of the sustainable
development of natural resources and the wellbeing of their inhabitants.
The Hindu Kush Himalayan region currently faces diverse challenges,
such as hunger and malnutrition, climate change, deforestation, environ-
mental degradation and desertification, loss of biodiversity, population
growth, and migration. These challenges disproportionally and more severely
affect the inhabitants. There are various reasons for this, including harsh
climatic conditions, weak infrastructure, and limited economic opportunities,
due to the inaccessibility, fragility, and seasonality of mountain areas.
Regional and global changes, including climate change, land use change,
deforestation, and overgrazing, are affecting mountains in an unprecedented
manner. While the global average of food insecure people is one in eight, one
in two food insecure people live in rural mountain areas. Many mountain
v
vi ForewordbyI.P.Abrol
peoples in the Himalayas are farmers who live on subsistence agriculture.
Over generations, living in their particular high-risk environments, they have
developed solutions and techniques, indigenous practices, knowledge, and
sustainable soil management approaches that shape and protect ecosystems
that ultimately provide water for at least half the world’s population.
Himalayan soils have long performed a host of essential ecosystem ser-
vices that helped to ensure food security and nutrition. Soils play a key role
in providing food and nutritional security. Soils help people to mitigate and
adapt to climate change by playing a dominant role in carbon sequestration
and water management. However, over-exploitation of soil resources has
rendered them vulnerable to erosion and degradation. With the continuous
increase in population, there will be more pressure on limited land resources.
Understanding and judicious management of soil resources are, therefore,
necessary to fulfill future needs of the human and livestock population. While
mountain agriculture has made some headway, identifying innovative
responsive solutions that target mountains directly in relation to sustainable
development remains a distant dream.
This publication by Sharma et al. outlines how understanding HKH soils
and their judicious management would transform mountain agriculture and
could better contribute to food security and better nutrition in the region. The
objectives of this publication were to identify constraints, gaps, and oppor-
tunities in mountain agriculture to tap underutilized areas and resources for
zero hunger and exchange of good experience and practices related to
mountain agriculture. Conventional approaches in mountain agriculture have
not been able to ensure food security. The volume offers fairly good coverage
of physiography and resources, soil geology, soil microbes, nature and
properties of soils, and land use and management, for livelihood security in
the HKH region. I wish to congratulate the authors for their hard work in the
consolidation of the important available information on, soils and their
management in the HKH region, in one place for easy access and use to
improve food security.
New Delhi, India Dr. I. P. Abrol
February 2020
I. P. Abrol, Director, Centre for Advancement of Sustainable Agriculture
and Former Deputy Director General, Division of Natural Resources Man-
agement, Indian Council of Agricultural Research
Foreword by K. M. Bujarbaruah
I am extremely happy to have received a request from one of my closest
friends cum colleagues, Dr. Uttam Chand Sharma to write the foreword for
their book “Soils: Their Management for Agricultural Land Use in Hindu
Kush-Himalayas”. I have known Dr. Sharma as a developer of simulation
models for natural resource management, particularly for hill ecosystems
using the available data and his personal and team research experience. He
learnt this art of natural resource management much before the advent of
Artificial Intelligence applications in agriculture. Similarly, the other two
authors, Dr. Mrinmoy Dutta and Vikas Sharma, are also equally known to me
for their contribution to their expert area domain which is Soil. I, therefore,
considered the request of Dr. U. C. Sharma as an opportunity to push forward
the book to the soil scientists, students, farmers, policymakers, and all other
stakeholders.
We are all increasingly aware that the world is going to demand around 60
percent more food by 2050 than the current level of production that too in the
face of shrinking natural resources and challenges ranging from climate
change to various other stresses, both biotic and abiotic. This realization has
encouraged crop scientists globally to devise newer methods and method-
ologies; tools, techniques, and technologies right from soilless agriculture to
zero gravity to vertical to precision agriculture bringing in innovations in the
traditional methods or innovating and applying newer sciences like Artificial
Intelligence together with RS and GPS tools. While we wait for perfection
and wider use of these upcoming technologies, our continued effort to pro-
duce more has to have its base on Soil—the main food production medium.
Although our survival depends on this vital resource called Soil, it is often
seen that its study including the study materials is comparatively less which
is why perhaps Leonardo Da Vinci had once said
“we know more about the movement of celestial bodies than about the soil
underfoot.” To me particularly, our soil is just like our mothers. All the
mothers while carrying their babies need extra care in the form of that
additional dose of protein, vitamins, calcium, etc. which we provide. Simi-
larly, a plot of land pregnant with a crop of wheat or any other crop needs
that care, that management so that it can yield a bumper harvest like a very
healthy baby. This art of managing the soil backed adequately by scientific
knowledge is the core issue for our food security and I am happy that
Dr. U. C. Sharma and his co-authors have tried to enlighten us all as to how
to expertly and sustainably manage the soils of Hindu Kush Himalayas,
vii
viii ForewordbyK.M.Bujarbaruah
known for enriching the food basket of the country with its diversified food
products.
The Hindu Kush Himalayan (HKH) region is one of the largest and most
assorted mountain settings in the world embracing 4.3 million km2 of land
with several parallel mountain ranges, such as the Karakoram, the Himalayas,
the Hindu Kush, and the Tibetan Plateau—all comprising of diverse land-
scapes of mountains, plateaus, river valleys, and adjoining foothills. The
region is famous for geo-hydrological, biological, cultural, and aesthetic
values with a hidden treasure of floral and faunal resources. Due to its
topographical advantages ranging from foothills to alpine zones, a wide
range of crops are grown in the region. On the livestock front, the HKH
mountains have all sorts of animals found in the plains with some special
livestock like mithuns and yaks, unique to this region only. The climatic
conditions range from tropical to high alpine zones with a principal vertical
vegetation regime representing tropical and subtropical rainforests; temperate
broadleaf, deciduous, or mixed forests; temperate coniferous forests; alpine
moist and dry scrub; meadows; and desert steppe. The HKH region is
inhabited by more than 210 million people representing diverse ethnic and
socio-cultural groups. In addition, 1.3 billion people living in the downstream
areas depend on the ecosystem goods and services flowing from the HKH
region.
The past few decades have witnessed unprecedented changes in the pat-
terns of resource use and developmental activities in the HKH region under
the influence of fast population growth, change in lifestyle, additional
requirement of food and essential goods and services, and socio-economic
transformation of the societies. These, coupled with a rapidly changing cli-
mate, pose serious threats to the sustainability of the ecosystems, especially
at higher altitudes, which are ecologically fragile and extremely sensitive.
With the exception of a few local and regional studies, there have been no
serious efforts to enhance scientific understanding of the significance of
ecosystem interfaces and the value of the ecosystem services of the HKH
region. The fundamental characteristic of mountain agriculture in the
mountain system is its extreme internal variability and complexity, with a
multiplicity of highly localized micro-ecosystems providing the habitats for
many unique crop varieties and animal species.
The most important factor responsible for agriculture development and its
sustainability in HKH is the medium of plant growth itself, that is, “Soil”.
Understanding the nature of the soil and its management is very important to
raise crop productivity and production and, improve the quality of life of the
Himalayan people. Soil management is the application of operations, prac-
tices, and treatments to protect soil and enhance its performance. It includes
soil conservation, soil amendment, proper handling, and management of its
biota—the bacteria, fungi, actinomycetes, etc. for ensuring its optimal and
sustainable health. The focus of agriculture in the Himalayan region is slowly
shifting from traditional cereal crops to high-value cash crops farming such
as fruits and vegetables. This transformation from subsistence systems to
commercial agriculture poses new challenges for improving and maintaining
the productivity and quality of soil. Judicious soil management will play a
ForewordbyK.M.Bujarbaruah ix
crucial role in maintaining an optimum level of soil fertility to accommodate
a new set of crops and cropping systems. Soils have been and still are the
primary medium for large-scale agricultural production upon which human
civilizations have depended for sustenance. Efforts to reduce the poverty of
people in remote mountainous areas by responding to the growing demand
for mountain agricultural products often call for more intensive use of natural
resources, in particular soil and water. Communities living in mountainous
areas have developed unique and sustainable production systems adapted to
their local environments. Successful soil management in mountainous areas
necessitates that these locally adapted production and processing techniques
are both retained and improved upon injecting state-of-the-art modern
technologies without harming the prevailing ecological balance and
ecosystem. I am further happy that the authors have kept these indicators in
view while penning down this book and also incorporated additional basic
information on soils required for developing appropriate strategies to get
maximum from limited arable soil resources of the HKH region for food and
nutritional security.
I compliment the authors once again and hope that the publication will
fulfill the purpose for which it has been written.
Guwahati, India Prof. K. M. Bujarbaruah
February 2020
K. M. Bujarbaruah, Former Deputy Director General, Indian Council of
Agricultural Research & Vice Chancellor, Assam Agricultural University
