Mubashir Bukhari
Srinagar (NVI): An environmental crisis looms large over Kashmir as a study has found that the Himalayan glaciers in the Valley have lost 23 per cent area in the last 60 years, posing serious threats like water shortage and decrease in agriculture productivity in the region.
“The shrinking of glaciers and the depleting stream flows, if continues in the future, will adversely affect the availability of water in the valley, especially during summers when it is needed the most. This will lead to decline in hydropower generation, decrease in agriculture productivity, fall in winter tourism and drinking water scarcity,” says Professor Shakil Romshoo, a national award-winning scientist who conducted the study in 2018 with Asif Marazi, one of his fellows at the Department of Earth Sciences at Kashmir University.
The study was aimed at accessing the impact of streamflow to the shrinking glacial mass by selecting a total of 37 glaciers from the Lidder valley in the south-eastern part of Kashmir, which hosts many glaciers including the largest glacier — the Kolahoi.
According to a glacier research report by India Climate Dialogue, the famed fertility of the Kashmir Valley owes a lot to the meltwater of the Kolahoi Glacier. It is one of the most famous glaciers in Kashmir but is slowly losing its crown due to climate change.
The study by Romshoo and Marazi investigated the streamflow response to the shrinking cryosphere under changing climate in the Lidder valley, Upper Indus Basin (UIB), Kashmir Himalayas. They used a combination of multitemporal satellite data and topographic maps to evaluate the changes in area, length and volume of the glaciers from 1962 to 2013. A total of 37 glaciers from the Lidder valley, with an area of 39.76 square km in 1962 were selected for research in the study.
“It was observed that the glaciers in the valley have lost 23 per cent of the area and 22 per cent of glacial mass in the last 60 years,” says Professor Romshoo, while commenting on the climate change effect on the glaciers till 2019-2020 period. Back in 2013, the study had compiled the data for 51 years.
The study notes that the depletion of glaciers has led to the significant depletion in the stream flows under the changing climate in the valley. “The shrinking of glaciers in the region is due to the increasing temperatures and the change in the form of precipitation (from snow to rain) observed in the region during winters, he says.
The streamflow shows an overall decreasing trend (of precipitation) in the peak summer months of June and July; however, an increasing trend in April and May, as per the study.
Professor Romshoo termed precipitation as an important climatic parameter that controls the overall health of a glacier in the Lidder valley.
The climate change due to global warming and other human factors has already been ringing alarm bells in Valley in the form of snow avalanches, snowstorms and low production of crops like saffron on which the lives of many farmers in Kashmir depend.
