Talk:Potohar Plateau

Talk

Discussion for: Potohar Plateau • View • Links • Related changes

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Page scope

Potohar Plateau is a Growing Region: a named region above Growing Areas. It treats the wild hemp of the Potohar Plateau, in northern Punjab and the Islamabad Capital Territory, as the Hemp Drugs Commission's witnesses described it in 1893–94 and as Younas and colleagues sampled it in 2023.

Data verification

Record source conflicts, dating problems and sources not used here. Keep narrative content on the article.

Discussion

Why the region is on the map

• Witnesses before the Indian Hemp Drugs Commission (1893–94) described hemp growing spontaneously in the Rawalpindi Division: S. S. Thorburn in all its hilly and submontane districts, Rawalpindi above all; Amir Haidershah in the Rawalpindi district, where it was not cultivated; Mathra Das to a small extent in the Rawalpindi district.
• Younas and colleagues (2024) sampled 35 wild populations in June and July 2023 on the Potohar Plateau and in the Lesser Himalayas, and write that wild hemp grows commonly in Punjab, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Islamabad.
• The region is a tract of wild hemp. No source read records hemp cultivated for drugs on the plateau.

Growing status

• The status is Active: wild populations were sampled across the plateau in 2023, in districts the witnesses of 1893–94 named. No source read says the wild growth has ended.

Extent and border

• Younas and colleagues put the plateau at about 22,254 km² and name Attock, Jhelum, Chakwal and Rawalpindi as its districts.
• The map border follows whole districts as mapped in OpenStreetMap: Attock (relation 8163675), Rawalpindi (8161545), Jhelum (8162534), Chakwal (16117656), Talagang (16341483, mapped separately from Chakwal) and the Islamabad Capital Territory (358002); about 22,450 km².
• Murree District is left out: Younas and colleagues place the Hazara–Murree slopes in the sub-outer Himalayas. Gujrat and Sialkot, which Thorburn names, and Bhimber are left out: no source read puts them on the plateau. The Salt Range of the old Shahpur district, where Wilson describes wild hemp, now lies in Khushab District and is left out for the same reason.
• The rule that leaves out ground above 4,000 m (SRTM elevation) and land that ESA WorldCover 2021 maps as bare or sparse vegetation, permanent snow and ice, or open water changes the line by less than 0.5 per cent here, so the district line is kept.
• The point in the infobox is a point inside the border near its centre.
• In the table of Younas and colleagues, the point given for Pind Dadan Khan (32.57° N, 72.02° E) falls outside Jhelum District, where the town lies; the article names the locality and uses no point from the table.

Accessions and news inside the border

• Stewart s.n., Rawalpindi (1913) lies inside the border. Its label gives no habitat, so it is not filed under the region.
• The seizure reports from Islamabad airport and the motorway near Rawalpindi concern drugs in transit and are not filed under the region.

Sources

• Indian Hemp Drugs Commission (1894). The evidence of Thorburn (Vol. V, p. 361), Wilson (p. 389), Mathra Das (p. 458) and Amir Haidershah (p. 470) was read on the page images; the commission's own account of the submontane belt (Vol. I, ch. III, paras. 45–50) in its text. Thorburn and Wilson spoke as district officers of the colonial administration.
• Younas and colleagues (2024). The paper and its Table 1 of localities.

Sources not used

• The Gazetteer of the Rawalpindi District (1893–94) lists hemp among the crops cut in October and picked in December, without saying whether it was grown for fibre or for the drug; it is not used.
• Wilson's statement that in the Shahpur district hemp was cultivated for bhang on not more than five acres, on land watered from wells, is not used: the land cannot be placed.
• Studies that list the plant among the weeds or the gathered wild plants of Islamabad and the Jhelum district are not used; the 2023 survey covers the same ground.