Nepal shrinking by two soccer fields per year: GPS report:

[India News]: New Delhi, Feb 3 : The Kingdom of Nepal, currently passing through a political crisis, is also geologically shrinking by 18 mm each year as a result of the Indian plate pushing it, says American seismologist Roger Bilham of Colarodo University.

"This is equivalent to the loss of two soccer fields a year along its 600 km-long northern border (with Tibet)," he says in a report in his website.

Nepal is getting shortened because the Indian plate moves 50 mm closer to Asia each year or about one mm each week according to Global Positioning Satellite (GPS) measurements revised as on August 2004, Bilham says. At the same time, Tibet moves 32 mm closer to Asia each year.

According to Bilham, more than 50 GPS points throughout Nepal are measured periodically, and five operate continuously. Convergence across the Himalayas is determined to be 19-22 mm/year.

The mountains of Tibet, the Tien Shan and the Himalayas are the result of compression caused by plate collision, says his report.

On future earthquakes in the Himalayas, Bilham concludes that "several more than 8 magnitude earthquakes may be overdue." Due to increasing population and urbanization in the Ganges plain, the death toll from any one of these earthquakes could now exceed one million, he says.

"We know only approximately where these future earthquakes will occur and we know considerably less about their timing," Bilham says. PTI