The retreating behavior of glaciers observed in most of the Hindu Kush–Karakoram–Himalaya (HKH) region has given rise to the formation and expansion of numerous glacial lakes in the region. The lakes ...expansion under changing climate usually poses high risk of glacial lake outburst flood (GLOF) hazard for the downstream communities. In the present study, the risk of glacial lake outburst flood was investigated in the HKH region of Pakistan using LANDSAT-8 OLI (Operational Land Imager) image data of 2013 period coupled with ground information. The results of present study revealed 3044 lakes (surface area about 134.8 km
2
) in the three HKH ranges, maximum in the Karakoram (1325) and minimum in the Hindu Kush range (722) during 2013. The lakes exhibited an overall increase of about 26% in number and 7% in area in the region during 2001–2013 period. The increase in lake number was 91% within 2500–3500 m, 20% within 3500–4500 m and 31% within 4500–5500 m elevation range. Among total identified lakes during 2013, 36 were characterized as potentially dangerous glacial lakes (PDGLs) that can pose GLOF hazard in the HKH region. A regular monitoring of cryosphere changes and critical glacial lakes is essential to develop sustainable risk management strategies for this region in future.
The current study sought to ascertain the impact of inter-parent conflicts on teenage psychological distress, social and academic adjustment and examine the suicide ideation during the COVID-19. The ...results found to be alarming as 22% of the individuals displayed suicidal tendencies, with 9% having attempted suicide once, 4.6% having tried suicide twice, and 11% stating that they were likely to do so again. Therefore, the media and the government might host awareness programs and counseling initiatives to promote mental health and prevent suicidal behavior. Moreover, parents may be educated on community level, about the effect of inter-parental arguments on the mental health of their children.
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ssessment of land use change impacts on watershed hydrologic processes is of great importance to draw the attention of water resource managers and policy makers for better planning and management ...of the shrinking resources for the survival of surrounding population of the region. Chirah watershed is an important hydrologic unit which generates an average of 0.53 MCM water per day. Soan River originates from here, supplying an average inflow of 0.2 MCM day
−1
to Simly Dam. Since a couple of decades, rainfall variability coupled with growing population is threatening Soan River flows. Deforestation and land use/land cover (LULC) changes have affected the natural pathways of water, decreased groundwater recharge, and triggered flash floods. Therefore, the aim of this research was to assess the impact of LULC changes on the hydrologic processes of the watershed using the Soil and Water Assessment Tool (SWAT), a hydrological model to propose management strategies. LULC change assessment was carried out on Landsat-5 TM and OLI_TIRS images through ‘Supervised Classification’ at four-time steps (1990, 1999, 2010, and 2016). Due to limited ground observations, corresponding Google Earth images were used in mapping. The SWAT model was evaluated using the Nash-Sutcliffe efficiency (NSE) and relative volumetric error (RVE) objective functions on monthly time steps. The NSE achieved during calibration and validation, 0.63 and 0.45, respectively, indicates acceptable levels of model performance despite outliers in the hydro-meteorological dataset. Similarly, the RVE was less than ±5% during both periods, indicating that the model simulated water balance reasonably well. Changes in LULC resulted in alteration of all the hydrological parameters. Conversion of scrub thorny forest (14.74%) into built-up areas (9%) resulted in higher imperviousness which triggered runoff to 24% and lowered groundwater recharge by 8% in 27 years indicating that the hydrologic regime is sensitive to LULC changes.
Many environmental studies have shown that a systems approach, including complete supply chains, is relevant for the assessment of the consequences of production and consumption on natural resources. ...This can also be applied to water. Although water consumption also includes water supply chains, often irrigation supply chains are excluded in water footprint (WF) studies. Using information from water management studies on water losses, we propose an improved WF method that includes blue crop WFs and WFs of irrigation supply chains indicating total agricultural blue WFs. A systems approach considering not only irrigation technology but whole water supply chains, also distinguishing between surface and groundwater, is needed to improve efficient blue water use in agriculture. This method is applied to the Pakistani part of the Indus basin that includes the largest man-made irrigation network in the world. The total agricultural blue WF is 1.6 times the blue crop WF. Surface water losses vary between 45 and 49%, groundwater losses between 18 and 21% and are smaller than results from water management studies. Differences between provinces and canal commands are large. The identification of hotspots provides a tool to improve water management. Earlier WF studies might have underestimated agricultural water consumption if supply chains are neglected. More water efficient agriculture should take supply chain losses into account probably requiring water management adaptations, which is more a policy than an agriculture task. WFs of supply chains are also relevant for other sectors, like industry or municipal water supply.
The environmental challenges posed by global warming in the Himalayan region include early and rapid melting of snow and glaciers, creation of new lakes, and expansion of old ones posing a high risk ...of glacial lakes outburst flood (GLOF) hazard for downstream communities. According to various elevation ranges, 3044 lakes were analyzed basinwide in the Hindu Kush-Karakoram-Himalaya (HKH) ranges of Pakistan using multisensor remote sensing data of the 2001–2013 period. An overall increase in glacial lakes was observed at various altitudinal ranges between 2500 and 5500, m out of which noticeable change by number was within the 4000–4500m range. The analysis carried out by glacial-fed lakes and nonglacial-fed lakes in different river basins indicated variable patterns depending on the geographic location in the HKH region. The correlation analysis of parameters like lake area, expansion rate, and elevation was performed with 617 glacial lakes distributed in various river basins of the three HKH ranges. Lake area (2013) and elevation showed a negative relationship for all basins except Hunza, Shigar, and Shyok. The correlation between the expansion rate of lakes and elevation was on the positive side for Swat, Gilgit, Shigar, and Shingo basins—a situation that may be attributed to the variable altitudinal pattern of temperature and precipitation. In order to explore such diverse patterns of lake behavior and relationship with influential factors in the HKH, detailed studies based on using high resolution image data coupled with in situ information are a prerequisite. Although an increase in lake area observed below 3500m would be favorable for water resource management, but could be alarming in context of glacial flood hazards that need to be monitored critically on a long-term basis.
•Overall increase in the glacial lakes was observed within 2500–5500m in the Hindu Kush, Karakoram and Himalaya ranges.•Majority of the glacial lakes were concentrated within 4000–4500m elevation range.•Maximum percentage change in lakes number was noticed within 3000–3500m range.•The correlation between the lakes expansion and elevation was positive for all three Himalayan ranges.
One of the spectacular effects of recent atmospheric warming in the Himalayan region has been the creation of meltwater lakes on the lower sections of many glaciers. Climate change is likely to ...exacerbate further some of these natural hazards such as glacial lake outburst floods (GLOFs), which can cause major social and economic damage for large populations living in the Himalayan region. Thirty-five destructive outburst floods have been recorded for the Karakoram Range in the past 200 years. Systematic application of remote sensing and geographic information systems (GIS) has revealed the formation of about 2420 glacial lakes in the Hindukush-Karakoram-Himalaya (HKH) Region of Pakistan, among which 52 lakes are characterized as potentially dangerous GLOF hazards. About 62% of the GLOF lakes belong to End Moraine Dammed type and 25%to Cirque type. Due to poor livelihood conditions, lack of resources and proper management within the system the local communities have a problem intaking effective response measures for risk reduction or mitigation. There is aneed to create awareness of flood hazard, coordination and capacity buildings for preparedness and risk reduction among target communities. High resolutionsatellite data integrated with ground information can be utilized effectively for regular monitoring of these lakes in order to mitigate flood risk hazard in future.
Knowledge of Himalayan cryosphere seems to be an outstanding requirement for assessment of glacier storage, water balance analysis, planning of water resources and flood hazard monitoring. A stepwise ...approach through mapping glaciers and glacial lakes using satellite remote sensing data and investigating potential glacial lake outburst flood (GLOF) hazards was adopted for the three Hindukush, Karakoram and Himalayan (HKH) ranges of Pakistan. The findings of the study revealed 5,218 glaciers in the cryosphere of HKH ranges. The cumulative glacial cover of over 15,000 km
2
contains ice reserves of about 2,738 km
3
. About 46 % of the Karakoram glaciers are contributing 77 % to the total glacial cover and 87 % to the cumulative ice reserves of the country. The 33 % Himalayan glaciers and 21 % Hindukush glaciers contribute only 3 and 10 % ice reserves, respectively. Among 2,420 glacial lakes identified in the three HKH ranges, 52 were classified as critical lakes that can pose GLOF hazard for the downstream communities. Most of the potential hazardous lakes lie in the Karakoram and Himalayan ranges, the monitoring of which is crucial to reduce high risk of future floods hazard in this fragile mountain ecosystem of the Himalayan region.
Global climate change during the twentieth century had a significant impact on the glaciers that resulted in creation of new lakes and expansion of existing ones, and ultimately an increase in the ...number of glacial lake outburst floods (GLOFs) in the Himalayan region. This study reports variation of the end-moraine dammed lakes in the high altitude Hindukush-Karakoram-Himalaya (HKH) region of Pakistan to evaluate future floods hazard under changing climate in this region. An integrated temporal remote sensing and Geographic information system (GIS) based approach using satellite images of Landsat-7 and 8 was adopted to detect 482 endmoraine dammed lakes out of which 339 lakes (>0.02 km
2
) were selected for temporal change analysis during the 2001-2013 period. The findings of the study revealed a net expansion in the end-moraine dammed lakes area in the Karakoram (about 7.7%) and in the Himalayas (4.6%), while there was a net shrinkage of about 1.5% in the lakes area in the Hindukush range during this period. The percentage increase in the lakes’ area was highest above 4500 m asl in the Hindukush, within 3500-4000 m asl in the Himalayas and below 3500 m asl in the Karakoram range. The overall positive change in the lakes’ area appears to prevail in various altitudinal ranges of the region. The heterogeneous areal changes in the endmoraine dammed lakes might be attributed to different climate regimes and glacial hydrodynamics in the three HKH ranges. A periodic monitoring of the glacial lakes and their associated glaciers is essential for developing effective hazard assessment and risk reduction strategies for this high altitude Himalayan region.
This research was carried out to estimate genetic variability, heritability, index of variation and genotypic and phenotypic correlations among half sib recurrent families for various traits. Sixty ...four half sib recurrent families were evaluated in 8×8 lattice square design with two replications at Cereal Crops Research Institute CCRI, Pirsabak during 2017. Data were noted on ears plant-1, ear length, ear diameter, grain rows ear-1, grains row-1, 1000 grain weight and grain yield. Analysis of variance showed highly significant differences among the half sib families for all the studied traits. High heritability (h2 > 0.60) was recorded for all traits except 1000 grain weight which exhibited moderate heritability (0.54). High index of variation (I.V > 1) was observed for all traits. Grain yield showed significant and positive genotypic correlation with ears plant-1 (rG = 0.46··), ear length (rG = 0.50··), grain rows ear-1 (rG = 0.24·), grains row-1 (rG = 0.34··) and 1000 grain (rG = 0.39··). On other hand grain yield exhibited highly significant and positive phenotypic correlation with ear length (rP = 0.33··). Present research indicates the presence of significant genetic variability in CIMMYT maize population CZP-132011. Substantial variability exists in half sib recurrent families for yield attributes, indicating that there is an opportunity for improvement via selection. The magnitude of genotypic correlations were higher than phenotypic correlations for yield attributes, which means that selection for these traits will improve grain yield. The study also observed that correlations as well as heritability were suitable as models for yield improvement and selection for best families. Traits that had higher heritability and positive correlation with grain yield may be considered as important traits in selection programme aiming to maize yield improvement and the breeder may consider these traits as main selection criteria.
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