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During uplift of the Tibetan plateau and surrounding ranges, tectonic processes have interacted with climatic change and with local random effects (such as landslides) to determine the development of the major river systems of Asia. Rivers draining southward have three distinctive patterns that are controlled by different tectonic and climatic regimes. In central and southern Afghanistan, the rivers have moderate gradients and fan out from northeastern sources to disappear into arid depressions. Anti-clockwise rotation of southern Afghanistan, caused by differential compression and right-lateral shear, cut the rivers on the north, while increasingly arid conditions developed on the south as are accretion in the Makran separated sources from the coastal rains. In Tibet and southeast Asia, the rivers are widely separated and have low gradients on the Tibetan plateau, higher gradients as they turn southwards into close and parallel gorges, before they fan out southeast to enter different seas. Differential shear and clockwise rotation between the compressing Tibetan plateau and Southeast Asia determined the great sigmoidal bends of this river system which was accompanied by increasing aridity, with truncation of river systems in the north and river capture in the south. In the Himalaya and southern Tibet, the main rivers have steep gradients where they cut across the Himalayan range and occasionally truncate former rivers with low gradients on the Tibetan plateau to the north. Southward thrusting and massive frontal erosion of the Himalaya caused progressive truncation of longitudinal rivers on the plateau, accompanied by river capture, and glacial and landslide diversions on the south. The drainage history of southern Asia can be reconstructed by restoring the gross movements of the plates and the tectonic displacement, uplift, and erosion of individual tectonic units. Most important changes in drainage took place in Pliocene to Quaternary times. (C) 1998 Elsevier Science B.V.