Interpretation of Glacial lakes and Water Bodies in the Himalayan Region to Control Natural Hazards using Geospatial Technology

Abstract

The receding of mountain glaciers worldwide is impacting the global climate changes. The melting of Himalayan glaciers is one of reason to increases related natural disasters like Glacial Lake Outburst Floods in this region. Due to glaciers retreat action form ice ‘dams’. Naturally these structures are weak & sometimes suddenly break and with in short period its lead to millions of cubic meters of water release and its causes catastrophic flooding and serious damage of life and property in the downstream area. In order to assess the risk of glacier and glacier lakes there study should done critically. As a first step preparation of database of glacier lakes and water bodies is significant. In this context, satellite remote sensing technology helps in preparing the inventory of glacier and glacier lakes are mapped using geospatial data in the Himalayan region. This project aims to identify and prepare an inventory of glacial lakes and water bodies in the Chenab, Ravi and Beas sub-basins in the Indus basin, in the study area. The Satellite images of Resources at 2 LISS 4 are used in this study. Using this data, glacial lakes and water bodies were analysed based on their location, water shed area, elevation and aspect wise. Based on this analysis we observed that in Chenab sub-basin there are 135, 33 water bodies and glacier lakes respectively, for Ravi sub-basin it has 53,18 water bodies and glacier lakes respectively and for Beas it has 131, 33 water bodies and glacier lakes respectively. Generally above 4500m most of the water bodies and Water bodies are observed. In aspect wise identified that the most of the glacier lakes and the water bodies are formed in the South-West direction.