High-mountain Asia
High-Mountain Asia (HMA) is a high-elevation geographic region in Asia that includes numerous cordillera and highland systems around the Tibetan Plateau, encompassing regions of East, Southeast, Central and South Asia. The region was orogenically formed by the continental collision of the Indian Plate into (and underneath) the Eurasian Plate. According to NASA, the region is the "world's largest reservoir of perennial glaciers and snow outside of the Earth's polar ice sheets", and has been nicknamed the "Third Pole". Their meltwaters and runoffs form the headwaters of river systems that support the drinking water  and food production of nearly 3 billion people, and hydrological and climate changes in the mountains affect "ecosystem services, agriculture, energy and livelihood" for all the surrounding areas. NASA has a High Mountain Asia Team (HiMAT) to study the region. Recently, in a 2020 study the term High Asia or High Mountain Asia was used metaphorically to categorise Kashmir, Hazara, Nuristan, Laghman, Azad Kashmir, Jammu, Himachal Pradesh, Ladakh, Gilgit Baltistan, Chitral, Western Tibet, Western Xinjiang, Badakhshan, Gorno Badakhshan,Fergana, Osh and Turkistan Region. These rich resource areas are surrounded by the five major mountainous systems of Tien Shan, Pamirs, Karakoram , Hindu Kush and Western Himalayas and the three main river systems of Amu Darya, Syr Darya and Indus. The work further highlighted the role of USA, China, Russia, UK, India, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkey, Iran and other players involved in The New Great Game over who will dominate High Asia in the 21st century. Geography. High-Mountain Asia is centered around Tibetan Plateau (a.k.a. the "Roof of the World"), and extends to the surrounding regions as numerous mountain ranges: These mountain range networks contains all 14 peaks above and all of the peaks above, and expand across  the mountainous Chinese provinces of Tibet, Xinjiang, Sichuan and Yunnan (including the flat and depressed Tarim Basin in southern Xinjiang, which contains China's largest desert, the Taklamakan), northern Myanmar, the Himalayan nations of Nepal and Bhutan as well as north/northwestern Pakistan and northeastern India, and most of the southeastern Central Asian nations of Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Afghanistan. Their rain shadows are partly responsible for the cold arid climate in parts of Central Asia and the Mongolian Plateau.