Climate warming has long been known to cause glaciers to melt and ‘retreat’ up the mountain to higher altitudes, leaving land that had been under ice for many millenia suddenly exposed to the air. The fate of this land varies – in many cases natural vegetation moves in, but in others local people cultivate the exposed land. In the Himalaya, the rate of vegetation shift up the mountainsides and the effects of topographic parameters on the exposed areas’ colonization by vegetation have yet to be quantified.