Spatio-Temporal Changes in Snow, Vegetation and Wood Lines in a Central Himalayan Watershed
摘要
Over the past 50 years, the snow in Uttarakhand has been melting. Changes in the local climate have affected the reduction of snow cover, causing glaciers to pull back and gradually altering the lines of snow, plants, and trees. The wider access to geospatial technology, along with its worldwide reach and very low costs, enables quick, partly automated, and affordable evaluation of changes in glacier characteristics across extensive regions. The present study examines the future projections of the temporal changes in snow, vegetation, and wood lines using Normalized Difference Snow Index (NDSI) and Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) methods, selecting the Gori Ganga watershed, Kumaun Himalaya, Uttarakhand (India), as a case study. This research analyzed the NDSI for showing a snow line delineation area and the NDVI for vegetation line and wood line delineation areas. The study will help to determine snow, vegetation, wood line dynamics, and the kinetic change rate, and will also be useful to world level studies. For the detection of the displacement of snow, vegetation, and wood lines for three different periods, i.e., 1990, 1999, 2016, and 2022 remotely sensed images, i.e., Landsat-5 for the years 1990 and 1999 and Landsat-8 for the years 2016 and 2022 together with Cartosat-1 satellite images, were used. The findings reveal that in 1990, the average height of the snow line was about 4665.02 m, that of the vegetation line was about 4294.97 m, and that of the wood line was about 3516.11 m, whereas in 2022, the snow line was about 5185.47 m high, the vegetation line was about 4890.67 m high, and the wood line was about 4196.01 m high. These findings indicate that on average, during the last 32 years (1990–2022), about 520.45 m of the snow line at a rate of 16.26 m/year, about 595.7 m of the vegetation line at the rate of 18.62 m/year, and about 679.9 m of the wood line at the rate of 21.25 m/year sifted upward.