Srinagar, Aug. 8 -- By Dr. Tariq Abdullah

A colleague wrote here recently about the ledger Kashmir refuses to read: the glaciers, forests, wetlands and soils that keep the region's economy running while nobody counts them.

I want to pull one line item out of that ledger, the one I spent years measuring myself: Glaciers.

Everybody in Kashmir holds an opinion about glaciers, but almost nobody has looked at the numbers. Let me share some.

Start with a question that sounds like settled fact: how much ice does Kashmir actually hold?

The major global inventories, RGI, GAMDAM, ICIMOD, disagree with one another on area, elevation range, and even glacier count for the same valley.

My colleagues and I built our own inventory a couple of years...