Western Ghats
Mountain range along the western coast of India
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The Western Ghats, also known as the Sahyadri mountain range, is a mountain range that covers an area of 160,000 km2 (62,000 sq mi) in a stretch of 1,600 km (990 mi) parallel to the western coast of the Indian peninsula, traversing the states of Gujarat, Maharashtra, Goa, Karnataka, Kerala and Tamil Nadu. It is a UNESCO World Heritage Site and is one of the 36 biodiversity hotspots in the world. It is sometimes called the Great Escarpment of India. It contains a very large proportion of the country's flora and fauna, many of which are endemic to this region. The Western Ghats are older than the Himalayas. They influence Indian monsoon weather patterns by intercepting the rain-laden monsoon winds that sweep in from the south-west during late summer. The range runs north to south along the western edge of the Deccan Plateau and separates the plateau from a narrow coastal plain called the Western Coastal Plains along the Arabian Sea. A total of 39 areas in the Western Ghats, including national parks, wildlife sanctuaries and reserve forests, were designated as world heritage sites in 2012 – twenty in Kerala, ten in Karnataka, six in Tamil Nadu and four in Maharashtra.
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Western Ghats: A Journey into India's Biodiversity HotspotIn 2012, UNESCO inscribed the Western Ghats as a World Heritage Site, recognizing its extraordinary biodiversity and unique ecosystems.DNA - Published | |
Maharashtra landslide leaves behind 22 orphansThe devastating landslide at Maharashtra’s Irshalwadi in Sahyadri range has wiped out entire families, the sole survivor in many cases being a child. In all, 22 residents have been orphaned by the..IndiaTimes - Published | |
16 killed, 100 missing as rain-triggered landslide buries hamlet in MaharashtraIn one of the biggest natural disasters in Maharashtra, a massive landslide precipitated by over 400mm of rainfall flattened a remote tribal hamlet named Irshalwadi in Khalapur tehsil in the foothills..IndiaTimes - Published | |
62 plant species that can withstand extreme dehydration discovered in Western GhatsIndiaTimes - Published | |
Worst fires in Goa’s history burn down rare biodiversityGoa’s forests continued to burn for the sixth day on a trot scorching rare biodiversity as vast tracts of Western Ghats, one of the eight biodiversity hotspots of the world, remained ablaze in the..IndiaTimes - Published | |
Kerala losing paddy paradise to floods and a silent farmer flightExperts attribute the flooding to unseasonal rains and to the lowland sinking even further — the first a direct consequence of deforestation of the Western Ghats, and the latter, a result of rising..IndiaTimes - Published |