Discharge and suspended sediment dynamics in an Indian Himalayan river system

• Main Authors: Stott, TA, NUTTALL, A
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: Indian Association of Hydrologists 2016
• Subjects: GB Physical geography; Antarctic; The Antarctic; Greenland; Indian; Morton; Antarc*
• Online Access: http://researchonline.ljmu.ac.uk/id/eprint/4012/; https://researchonline.ljmu.ac.uk/id/eprint/4012/3/STOTT%20Ladakh%20Q%20and%20suspended%20sediment%20paper%20v1%2024-Dec-14.pdf; http://117.252.14.242/iah/chp3.html

A pure, clean and reliable water supply is of paramount importance in India where meeting the requirements of a rising population is one of the big challenges of the 21st century. Climate change in the Indian subcontinent, identified by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC, 2013) as the region with the highest level of climate instability, is of major concern (Immerzeel et al., 2010; Morton, 2011). In 2010 the floods in the Indus basin were the worst in history (Hobley et al., 2012). Two thousand people died in Pakistan and in the high-altitude desert of Ladakh, intense rain and floods centred around Leh, washed away homes and villages and killed 200 people. At present, 10 % of the earth’s land-mass is covered with snow. Of this total area, 84.16 % is in the Antarctic, 13.9 % in Greenland, 0.77 % in the Himalaya, 0.51 % in North America, 0.37 % in Africa, 0.15 % in South America, and 0.06 % in Europe. Outside the Polar Regions, the Himalaya has the maximum concentration of glaciers – 9.04 % of its area. An additional 30-to-40 % is covered with snow. The glaciers of the Himalaya are the Third Pole (Dyhrenfurth, 2011). They feed the giant rivers of Asia, support half of humanity and can have a significant influence on regional water availability (Immerzeel et al., 2009). Recent studies have confirmed the important role of high mountain areas of the world as sources of freshwater for the population living in the adjacent lowlands (eg. Bandyopadhyay et al., 1997; Viviroli &Weingartner, 2004; Barnett et al., 2005; Viviroli et al., 2007; Thayyen & Gergan, 2010) Despite the hydrological importance of glaciers for the adjoining lowlands, data on the glaciers of the Himalaya, Karakorum, and Hindu Kush ranges are sparse and inconsistent. There is a lack of long-term series and field investigations, especially for glaciers at higher altitudes (Armstrong, 2010; Schmidt & Nüsser, 2012).