ROLE OF EARTH OBSERVATION DATA AND HYDROLOGICAL MODELING IN SUPPORTING UN SDGs IN NORTH WEST HIMALAYA

Abstract

The sustainable usage and accurate assessment of water resources in North West Himalaya (NWH) is very important for respective policy makers. NWH receives precipitation from both southwest and northeast monsoon system. The detailed assessment of current and future water resources and hydrological cycle component for NWH river basins using earth observation (EO) satellites and hydrological models is very critical for attaining United Nations sustainable development goals (SDGs) namely, climate action, affordable and clean energy, clean water and sanitation and building resilient infrastructure. Present work highlights the role of various EO sensors and hydrological models and ground based instruments for improved assessment of water resources of NWH river basins. The complete inventory of NWH surface water (including glacier lakes of UK, HP), snow cover, delta SWE and glaciers database was accomplished with Remote Sensing (RS) datasets. Similarly, glacier velocity was estimated for all major glaciers of NWH using feature tracking and differential interferometry (DInSAR) methods. Fully distributed grid based hydrological model was setup for entire NWH and model calibration/validation was done for Beas, Satluj, Upper Ganga and Jhelum river basins. Quantification of relative contribution of snowmelt, glacier melt and rainfall-runoff was estimated for Bhagirathi basin upto Uttarkashi. An extensive network of automatic weather stations (AWS), 27 nos, 10 snow depth sensors, 04 digital water level recorders, two snow pack analysers and 06 long wave solar radiation sensors were installed in various sites of HP and UK for hydro-meteorological data collection, model simulation and validation. A future climate change simulations were done for Beas and Jhelum basins using CORDEX 4.5 and 8.5 scenarios from 2006–2100. Number of flood peaks were found to be increasing in number as well as decrease in total snow fall.