Soil Formation in the foreland of Bhimthang Glacier, Manang, Central Nepal

Abstract

Glacier forelands is considered as a unique field laboratory and the most sensitive and highly-confident indicators of climatic variation. Glacier forelands after retreat of glacier expose new sites to understand soil development through mechanical and chemical weathering, as well as biological i.e. due to vegetation and microbial colonization. The present study attempts to understand the variation in soil development through time and space and status of Bhimthang glacier foreland in Manang district of Central Nepal. Five transects were laid on the south-west aspect of foreland. The transects line were placed parallelly at the distance of 50m from each other. Along each transect, 12 quadrats of 2 m × 2 m each were laid down at an interval of 30 m. Result shows that the soil nutrient contents (SOC, N, P and K) increases with increased distance from glacier toe and the other physical as well as chemical properties (Soil depth, bulk density, pH, RRI, open space, vegetation cover and rock cover) also varied between newly formed soil and old aged soil along the glacier foreland. The study also explains the chrono sequential changes of glacier foreland soil through spatio- temporal scale. The area close to the glacier toe is regarded as young soil and farther from glacier as old soil. Bhimthang glacier was found to be continuously retreating from 1988 to 2018. Glacier foreland represents a unique platform for research on the study of chrono sequential changes of the ecosystems and soil development pattern during primary succession.

Key word: Climate change, Chronosequence, Physico-chemical parameters, Glacier retreat