Abstract
Being located in a seismically active zone, these mountain valleys are exposed to different hydro-meteorological hazards like rockfall, debris flow, landslide, ice avalanches, and glacial lake outburst flood (GLOFs). The present study is to investigate different multi-hazards and their prevailing risk in the particular area of Qurumbar valley Ishkoman. In the mid-nineteen and twenty centuries at least six devastating glacial lake outburst floods (GLOFs) has been recorded, initially, only the Qurumbar glacier was considered as the main cause of this outburst flood, later field investigation and interview from local inhabitant revealed that nine more tributary glacier are existing in the area. The recent outburst of flood in the Badswat area of Qurumbar Ishkoman is also considerable, submerging 12 houses and a stretch of roads. Apart from it, the physical vulnerability of the area is increasing, as new areas are being used for housing with the increase in population. The study area is exposed to several other natural hazards like rock fall, debris flows, ice avalanches, and bank erosion. The present study is based on quantitative and qualitative approaches in assistance with GIS/RS an emergent application. The following methodologies were adapted to gather the primary and secondary data for GIS/RS processing. The primary data comprises GIS data and procurement and development and field data. The field data contain ground-truthing /validation. The community-based Hazard Vulnerability Risk Assessment (HVRA) was also carried out to know about human perception. Secondary data has been collected from different literature. Both the data were put into GIS for the processing which gives us our final developmental tools in the form of maps. The hazard and risk map of the Qurumbar Ishkoman depict that flash floods, debris flow, bank erosion, and GLOFs account for major hazards in Qurumbar valley. It is concluded based on our outcomes i.e., hazard and risk maps that earthquake is the main hazard of the area while flash floods, GLOFs, debris flow, bank erosion and the bank collapsed are the main hazards of the area. It is very important to systematically integrate map information into the planning and management process which contributes to a safer environment.
Highlights
1.1 BackgroundHazards are threats that have the potential to harm people, livelihood and the environment
Physical, and meteorological activities output spell-out in the form of geophysical and hydro-meteorological hazards which include landslides, glacial lake outburst floods (GLOFs), land erosion, debris flow, flooding and earthquakes posing a continuous threat on the local residents as well as to the environment
The increasing population vulnerability to these multiples hazards is intensified by socio-economic factor like poverty, unavailability of land use methods and lake of awareness resulting in seismically weak housing stock in disastrous prone areas expose the communities more to these natural hazards
Summary
Hazards are threats that have the potential to harm people, livelihood and the environment. Being located in seismically active zone, the mountain valleys in northern Pakistan are always prone to hydro-metrological hazards like landslides, rock fall, debris flow, snow or ice avalanches, glacial lake outburst floods (GLOF), flooding and erosion. Climate changes induce hydro-meteorological and geo hazards are key concern in Asia and their impact on life, livelihood and environment has been increased in Gilgit-Baltistan in general and in Qurumbar valley in particular. Beside the normal natural events which occur frequently having limited geographic extent, a number of past historic (catastrophic) events like the 1893 and 1905 Qurumbar glacier lake outburst floods (GLOF), or the 1858 Sarat rock avalanche with subsequent catastrophic lake outburst flood occurred in northern areas and destroyed numerous villages along the main river downstream, [2]. During monsoon the western Himalaya Mountains act as a fence for vapor laden winds, these mountains received more annual precipitation than North Mountains of the Gilgit- Baltistan [5]
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