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Climate Change: Concerns and Influences on Biodiversity of the Indian Himalayas

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Climate Change

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Abstract

The Himalayas are a diverse and imperative center of biodiversity due to their immense climatic, topographic, and geographic ascents. The Indian Himalayan Region (IHR) started from Siwaliks (foothills of the south) and extended up to Trans-Himalaya (Tibetan plateau in the north), covering 12 Indian states. The IHR harbors many rivulets, lakes, rivers, vegetation, and animal species thus serves as a rich repository of biodiversity due to its unique biogeography. Climate change impacts such as increasing temperature, melting glaciers, and extreme weather events are severely deteriorating the fragile ecosystem and natural resources of the Himalayas, thus inducing the loss of biodiversity at an alarming rate. Consequently, these are also altering the development, behavior, and interactions between different biological species. It leads to the adaptation of species by developing new traits or migration and even extinction of several species. The present chapter investigates the causes and consequences of continually varying climate conditions on the behavior and survival of the species in the IHR, along with various approaches to mitigate global climate change.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Microbiology, Mata Gujri College (Autonomous), Fatehgarh Sahib, Punjab, India

    Damanjeet Kaur & Saurabh Gupta

  2. Department of Biotechnology, Punjabi University, Patiala, Punjab, India

    Damanjeet Kaur

  3. Department of Geography, Mata Gujri College (Autonomous), Fatehgarh Sahib, Punjab, India

    Anupreet Singh Tiwana

  4. University School of Law, Sri Guru Granth Sahib World University, Fatehgarh Sahib, Punjab, India

    Supinder Kaur

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  1. Damanjeet Kaur
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  2. Anupreet Singh Tiwana
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  3. Supinder Kaur
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  4. Saurabh Gupta
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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Geography, Institute of Science, Banaras Hindu University, Varanasi, Uttar Pradesh, India

    Seema Rani

  2. Department of Geography, School of Human Sciences, Sikkim University, Gangtok, Sikkim, India

    Rajesh Kumar

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Kaur, D., Tiwana, A.S., Kaur, S., Gupta, S. (2022). Climate Change: Concerns and Influences on Biodiversity of the Indian Himalayas. In: Rani, S., Kumar, R. (eds) Climate Change. Springer Climate. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-92782-0_13

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