Assessment of glacial lake development and downstream flood impacts of critical glacial lake

Uttam Puri Goswami () and Manish Kumar Goyal
Additional contact information
Uttam Puri Goswami: Indian Institute of Technology Guwahati
Manish Kumar Goyal: Indian Institute of Technology Indore

Natural Hazards: Journal of the International Society for the Prevention and Mitigation of Natural Hazards, 2021, vol. 109, issue 1, No 43, 1027-1046

Abstract: Abstract Glacial lakes are rapidly growing in response to climate change and glacier retreat which may lead to catastrophic socio-economic disasters. The failure of moraine-dammed lakes is associated with hazard for mountain communities due to high velocity and depth with destructive ability of glacial lake outburst floods (GLOFs). Therefore, assessment of glacial lake development and downstream flood impacts of critical glacial lakes with their undesirable outcomes is important. This study presents the insight of glacial lake outburst dynamics using detailed inventory of lakes with hydrological and hydrodynamic modeling over the area to be affected. As a result, total 203 glacial lakes are found having surface area > 0.01 km2 and more than 90% glacial lakes are situated at the high elevation (> 4500 m) zone. In addition, increasing lake size could increase the frequency of outburst and cause socio-economic damages. During the outburst of GL-3 Lake, the flow discharge could be increased by 4–6 times with 100% increase in velocity and depth and the travel time is 1.5–2.5 h to reach the Chugthang habitat. This increasing water level will directly affect the hydropower project at Chugthang, as there is no flat terrain for water spread. The flooding contributed due to lack of awareness of GLOF hazard and non-existence of land-use planning. Therefore, this study anticipated supporting the decision-makers to prepare the management plan in response to futuristic climate scenario and risk measures with inclusive of GLOFs; also suggested to utilize the glacial lakes as reservoir to reduce the risk for mountain communities.

Keywords: Glacial lake outburst flood (GLOF); Glacial lake inventory; Hydrodynamic modeling; Remote sensing; MIKE11; Himalaya (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s11069-021-04866-8 Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:spr:nathaz:v:109:y:2021:i:1:d:10.1007_s11069-021-04866-8

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer.com/economics/journal/11069

DOI: 10.1007/s11069-021-04866-8

Access Statistics for this article

Natural Hazards: Journal of the International Society for the Prevention and Mitigation of Natural Hazards is currently edited by Thomas Glade, Tad S. Murty and Vladimír Schenk

More articles in Natural Hazards: Journal of the International Society for the Prevention and Mitigation of Natural Hazards from Springer, International Society for the Prevention and Mitigation of Natural Hazards
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().