AUTHOR=Mohanty Litan , Maiti Sabyasachi , Dixit Ankur 

TITLE=Spatio-temporal assessment of regional scale evolution and distribution of glacial lakes in Himalaya

JOURNAL=Frontiers in Earth Science

VOLUME=Volume 10 - 2022

YEAR=2023

URL=https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/earth-science/articles/10.3389/feart.2022.1038777

DOI=10.3389/feart.2022.1038777

ISSN=2296-6463

ABSTRACT=Glacial lakes are a potential threat to livelihoods and precious infrastructures in the Himalayan region. The expansion of these lakes under the influence of global warming further poses a grievous risk of natural disasters in the form of glacial lake outburst flood that necessitates regular monitoring to reduce and mitigate its implications. This research focuses on the regional scale distribution and evolution of glacial lakes in the Himalayan mountain range with their causes. We used Landsat thematic mapper (TM) and operational land imager (OLI) images, Google Earth imageries, Shuttle radar topographic mission (SRTM) DEM, and Aphrodite climatic data to study lake evolution and its controlling parameters. An expansion of 38% and 21% in glacial lakes number and size was found from 1990 to 2019, respectively. The glacial lakes are distributed mainly in Langtang, Bhutan, Sikkim and Everest region; while, new lakes are forming at higher elevations continuously. The highest lake size expansion was noted in 2000-2010 followed by 2015-2020 and at an elevation band of 5000-5500m. Besides, glacier topography deciphered that some of the lakes are going to be detach from the glacier snout due to continuous glacier retreat, thus decreasing in lake size change rate in future. Moreover, lakes in the central and eastern Himalaya are highly affectd by climatic change, i.e., increasing in temperature an decreasing in precipitation.