Department of Geography, School of Sciences, Nagaland University, Lumami, 798627, India.
Department of Geography and Geoinformatics, Asian International University, Ghari, Imphal West, Manipur, 795140, India.
Environ Sci Pollut Res Int. 2024 Aug;31(39):52326-52351. doi: 10.1007/s11356-024-34627-6. Epub 2024 Aug 15.
Though climate change and its adverse ecological and geohydrological impacts are being experienced across the world in all types of ecosystems but as far as the Himalaya mountain ecosystem is concerned, the rate of climate change and subsequent impacts have reached an alarming stage due to anthropogenic and technogenic intervention on natural process and now need most effective and less time taking management strategy. Addressing this burning environmental problem, a geospatial artificial intelligence (GeoAI) technique-based case study is presented here from one of the most densely populated and urbanized regions of Himalaya mountain, viz Uttarakhand Himalaya, which is also called central Himalaya. The results of the study suggest that due to quite a high rate of climate change, the climatic zones shifting towards higher altitudes at the average rate of 5.6 2 m/year, causing several adverse ecological impacts in terms of decreasing quality dense temperate forest cover (0.05%/year), snow cover (0.02%/year), water bodies (0.01%/year), agricultural land (0.31%/year), and horticultural land (0.01%/year). Conversion of these eco-friendly land use land cover into barren land, fallow land, and built-up land causes geohydrological consequences of climate change in terms of decreasing rainy days (1%/year), drying perennial springs (0.20%/year), perennial streams (0.11%/year), decreasing spring and stream discharge during non-monsoon season, increased extreme rainfall events (6-8%/year), and subsequent surface runoff during monsoon season. Further, the study advocates that the degraded geohydrological process has resulted in an increased frequency of disaster events (floods, cloudbursts, landslides. etc.) with a 3% (12 events) annual rate, causing great loss of environment, infrastructure, lives, and economy each year. Therefore, it has been very urgent to mitigate climate change and increase geohydrological disaster events through an integrated approach. Keep in view this, the present study proposed an integrated watershed management plan which is equally useful to be implemented across the Himalaya region and other similar ecosystems across the world.
尽管气候变化及其对生态和水文地质的不利影响在世界范围内的各种生态系统中都有发生，但就喜马拉雅山生态系统而言，由于人为和技术对自然过程的干预，气候变化及其后续影响的速度已经达到了令人震惊的阶段，现在需要最有效和耗时最短的管理策略。针对这一紧迫的环境问题，本研究从喜马拉雅山脉人口最密集和城市化程度最高的地区之一——北阿坎德邦喜马拉雅山（也称为中央喜马拉雅山）进行了一项基于地理空间人工智能 (GeoAI) 技术的案例研究。研究结果表明，由于气候变化速度相当快，气候带正以平均 5.62 米/年的速度向更高海拔地区转移，导致了几个不利的生态影响，包括温带森林覆盖率（0.05%/年）、雪盖（0.02%/年）、水体（0.01%/年）、农业用地（0.31%/年）和园艺用地（0.01%/年）质量下降。这些环保型土地利用/土地覆盖类型向荒地、休耕地和建设用地的转变，导致了气候变化的水文地质后果，如降雨天数减少（1%/年）、常年泉干涸（0.20%/年）、常年溪流减少（0.11%/年）、非季风季节泉水和溪流流量减少、极端降雨事件增加（6-8%/年）以及季风季节地表径流增加。此外，研究表明，退化的水文地质过程导致灾害事件（洪水、泥石流、山体滑坡等）的频率增加，每年的频率为 3%（12 次事件），给环境、基础设施、生命和经济造成了巨大损失。因此，通过综合方法来减缓气候变化和增加水文地质灾害事件已经变得非常紧迫。有鉴于此，本研究提出了一个综合流域管理计划，该计划同样适用于喜马拉雅地区和世界其他类似生态系统。
