“Alpine transhumance”, according to its Wikipedia entry:
seasonal droving of grazing livestock between the valleys in winter and the high mountain pastures in summer.
Unsurprisingly, if you google for the term, and/or for information on high-altitude pastures, most of what you will find refers to Europe.
Europe’s largest single example of high altitude pasture (in Italy’s South Tyrolean Dolomites) covers 57 square kilometres; it sits between 1,600 & 2,350 metres above sea level.
Most European Alpine pastures are below 2,400 metres; none reach higher than 2,800 metres.
The domesticated sheep pictured above were grazing on grassy slopes at an altitude of more than 4,000 metres.
On the Tibetan Plateau, however, they were not remotely close to Alpine pastures’ “upper limit”!
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