Khum Paudayal

Dr. Khum Paudayal has been teaching Geology (Paleontology) at the Central Department of Geology at Tribhuvan University, Kathmandu since 1994. He received MSc from the Tribhuvan University and PhD from the Vienna University, Austria in 2002. In 2007-2009 he worked at Senckenberg Research Institute, Frankfurt am Main, Germany in a postdoc position under Alexander von Humboldt fellowship. His research was focused on evolution of past climate in south-Asia, especially after the collision of the Indian and Eurasian Plate in the Eocene. In 2013-2014 he worked in PaDeMoS (Pasture Development Monitoring System) under the Central Asian Monsoon Dynamics (CAME) project at Senckenberg Research Institute. This research was focused on degradation of rangeland in Tibet using a multi-proxy approach including vegetation ecology, small mammals, remote sensing and atmospheric pollen. His publications mostly related to plant fossils (leaves, fruit-seeds, pollen) from the Tertiary-Quaternary deposits in Nepal and Tibet, China and their interpretation in terms of climate dynamics during the upheaval of the Himalaya, evolution of monsoon system and precipitation. He was the chief editor of the Journal of Nepal Geological Society (2016-2017) and Bulletin of the Department of Geology, Tribhuvan University (2018-1019).