Disaster events and management in the Himalayan Watershed Gori Ganga, Kumaun Himalaya

Abstract

Global warming and disasters are fast emerging as the most defining challenges of the 21st century as global risks with impacts far beyond just the environment and implications on national security and development. The paper examines the natural disaster events due to anthropogenic accelerated global warming in context of Gori Ganga watershed, Kumaun Himalaya (Uttarakhand). The study area has been numerous devastating incidents of disaster events claiming huge losses of property, damages to forest wealth, road, agriculture land, infrastructure and livelihood. For present study mapping and data analysis on the basis of field survey for highly active flash flood and mass wasting sites during 2010-2019, earthquake epicenters occurred during 2011-2019, indiscriminate rock cutting for new road buildings and road induced landslide sites from 2014 to 2019 and isolated villages due to different disaster events during 2013-2019 in the Gori Ganga watershed. These disaster events suggested that the study area is being affected by global warming which being triggered different type of disaster events in the study area. A brief account of occurring disaster events in the study area such as earthquake, flash flood, mass wasting and road induced landslides is presented in the following paragraphs.