About this Research Topic

Background

The Himalayas including the Tibetan Plateau stores freshwater in the form of ice, glaciers, snow cover, and permafrost and is aptly known as the ‘Third Pole’. Melting ice and snow contribute and significantly regulate the runoff of regional river systems primarily the Indus, Ganges, and the Brahmaputra. The meltwater – being essential to human society, agricultural, and industrial production – also influences the hydrogeological and hydro-bio-geo-chemical processes. The processes, however, vary greatly from low-lying alluvial plains to the high altitude rain-shadow desert plateaus across the Himalayas. The regional hydrological regimes are also likely to be differentially affected under the varying climatic and orographic settings as well as heterogeneous glacier mass balances.

Over the last several decades, the rapid human-induced climatic changes have impacted the hydro-cryosphere both at local and regional scales. The net mass loss of ice, declining snow cover, and significant changes in river flow patterns are the most widely recognized indicator of such changes. Atmospheric pollutants like shortwave radiation-absorbing aerosols (Black Carbon, Brown Carbon, and dust) have multiple and complex impacts on climate and influence significantly the hydro-cryosphere. Heavily polluted Indo-Gangetic Plains, central China, and Middle East are generally the major sources of atmospheric pollutants around the Himalayas. Persistent Organic Pollutants and other dioxins from atmosphere, wildfires, burning of agricultural waste and fossil fuels, and automobile emissions take a long time to decompose following deposition and storage in the extremely sensitive ice/glacier ecosystems. These impurities reduce the surface albedo and increase the absorption of net shortwave radiation thereby; promoting faster ice melting. Understanding the role of atmospheric pollutants and their climatic effects in driving hydro-cryospheric changes is still a challenge in climate studies.

The climate-driven changes in the hydro-cryosphere will lead to water unavailability and will affect water quality (surface and groundwater), influence food supply and energy production, degrades tourism, and impact cultural landscapes. The hydro-cryospheric changes will also be responsible for hazardous disasters like glacial lake outburst floods (GLOFs), avalanches, landslides, and other catastrophic floods etc. In the Himalayan region, the changes in the cryosphere and its associated hydrological cycle could affect the water supply of over 1.4 billion people living in Asia and contribute to global sea-level rise. Therefore, a careful assessment of climate control, hydrologic response, disaster initiation, and social factors is required to understand the cryospheric influence on water resources sustainability, disasters, and its associated processes.

A critical link exists between the fate of the cryosphere, water resource sustainability, and natural disasters. Himalayan water resources have multiple uses and users; hence its inadequate management has frequently facilitated over-exploitation, contamination, and degradation, ultimately resulting in large economic losses and damages to the environmental systems and human health. The climate-induced disastrous events will create havoc with mountain dwellers and other infrastructure. The sustainability of the Himalayan hydro-cryosphere is therefore, a crucial environmental issue and a major challenge for development even beyond the topographically defined watershed boundaries – (the processes are inter-catchment and trans-boundary in nature). Understanding the complex dynamics of the hydro-cryosphere and its associated interactions with other components of the Earth system is fundamental to design adaptive measures in order to secure and manage the water resources and associated disasters for the sustainable future of the region. Its management involves a broad spectrum of water-related issues such as the efficiency of water usage, the allocation between competing uses such as agriculture, drinking water, natural ecosystems, industry, flood control, coordination between users at a local, national, and international level, degradation of water resources through pollution or over-use, treatment of wastewater, water storage, and much more.

This Research Topic aims to improve our understanding and demonstrate how ice and glaciers influence the quantity and quality of water resources and other related hydro-geo-bio-chemical processes and how those resources are exposed to different environmental changes, disasters, and risks across the Himalayas. We invite theoretical and data-driven contributions that can advance the predictive understanding of interaction and environmental impact assessment of cryosphere and associated hydrological, hydrogeological, and biological processes. The proposed topics of interest include, but are not restricted to:
• New approaches aggregating a spectrum of field, satellite, and experimental data sources to understand the spatio-temporal dynamics of cryosphere under changing climate in the region;
• Reactive transport modeling to understand hydro-bio-geochemical dynamics of cryospheric and its interactions with surface as well as groundwater water systems (geological, hydrodynamics, and chemistry in different aquifers) at local to regional scale;
• Quantification of fine-scale processes and contribution to the integrated, transient export of water, aerosol, Black Carbon, and other atmospheric pollutants and metals in the Himalayan hydro-cryospheric system;
• Effects of atmospheric pollutants (aerosols) and fate of pollutants in the cryosphere, atmosphere, hydrosphere and their environmental significance;
• Use of advanced techniques such as high resolution remote sensing and GIS, machine learning, and artificial intelligence to advance predictive modeling of various hydro-cryospheric and environmental changes;
• Simulating and estimating the snow/glacier melt contribution and modeling of climate-related disasters and hazards such as GLOFs, snow avalanches, landslides, other catastrophic floods; and,
• Using chemical compounds precisely to assess the chemical quality status and possible large-scale impact of anthropogenic activities through time on the cryosphere and associated hydrological systems.

Keywords: Environment, cryosphere, climate change, surface water and groundwater processes, hydrology-bio-geochemical process, Glacial Lake Outburst Floods, atmospheric pollution, black carbon and aerosol, cryospheric changes, trace elements

Important note: All contributions to this Research Topic must be within the scope of the section and journal to which they are submitted, as defined in their mission statements. Frontiers reserves the right to guide an out-of-scope manuscript to a more suitable section or journal at any stage of peer review.

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