Research Projects

Himalayas comprises a vast storage of fresh water in snowfields and glaciers, contributing to the drinking water, agriculture, and hydropower supply for the billions of people living downstream. However, recent studies on glacier mass balance reveal that the glaciers nowadays are highly sensitive to even small-scale climatic fluctuations leading to their heterogenous (surging or recession) behaviour. Glacier recession facilitates glacial lake expansion to potential Glacial Lake Outburst Flood (GLOF) events that cause immediate flash floods downstream that are often challenging to predict. This proposal explores the Glacier dynamics in the Rongdo catchment area of Shyok-Nubra Valley in Ladakh. Rongdo catchment has an area of 1151 km2, and hosts 88 glaciers which occupy roughly the 20% of the basin area, out of 88 glaciers 6 have proglacial lakes. However, due to the limited accessibility for fieldwork, the heterogeneous nature of the glaciers of the Rongdo catchment is poorly understood. Therefore, in the proposed research, with the continuous availability of satellite data and advanced techniques, the study will be carried out to understand the spatiotemporal dynamics (recession or surging) of the glaciers and expansion pattern of potentially dangerous lakes vulnerable to GLOF hazard using time series InSAR methods (such as PSI, SBAS etc.) in the Rongdo catchment area of Shyok-Nubra Valley. Further, geo-environmental factors and climatic parameters controlling glacier heterogeneity will be examined using machine learning-based ensemble learning methods. The parameters derived from the geospatial data assimilation can additionally deal with the machine learning-based regression and classification algorithms to explore the relationship between the dependent (glacier heterogeneity and glacial lake expansion) and independent variables (controlling factors such as type of lake and its volume; rate of lake formation, and growth; the position of the lake; dam condition; conditions of associated mother glacier; the reaction of the glacier to climate change; activity of glacier; morphometric characteristics of the glacier, glacier slope, glacier terminus slope, etc.). Besides, more work is needed to create a detailed inventory of glacial lakes and evaluate the risk of the critical lakes in the region, using both high-resolution satellite images and field inputs to mitigate, in advance, any likely GLOF hazards in the area and more thrust needs to be given on the surging glaciers in the area to know the characteristics of surging. Their surging pattern needs to be closely followed to avoid any ice-damming of the rivers to mitigate the region's hazardous floods. Consequently, mitigation strategies and control measures will be recommended and proposed to help policymakers develop plans for GLOF hazard management and risk reduction in the appropriate direction and time.