Introduction: The impacts of land use/land cover (LULC) pattern on surface components of water are less well recognized, particularly in the Kashmir Himalaya. The paper highlights the relationship between LULC and water chemistry for Wular Lake in Kashmir Himalaya. Methods: We used Indian Remote Sensing satellite (IRS) P6 using LISS III sensor with a spatial resolution of 23.5 m for various LULC categories. ERDAS IMAGINE 9.0 and ArcGIS 9.3 were used to generate the LULC map. Water parameters like pH and temperature were measured in the field, while parameters like dissolved oxygen, free carbon dioxide, chloride, alkalinity nitrogen and phosphorus values were determined by APHA (Standard Methods for Examination of Water and Wastewater, 1998).Results: The present study provides us the information about the proportion of different land cover categories and their correlation with some limnological parameters of Wular Lake. Among the various physicochemical parameters, low dissolved oxygen (DO) was observed in the LULC class which has the highest percentage of agricultural land (47.04%; r = 0.688 P < 0.05) followed by horticultural land (19.10%; r = 0.554; P < 0.01) in its catchment. The catchment area with greater percentage of agricultural fields drains maximum fertilizers in the lake, resulting in growth of microorganisms that deplete the dissolved oxygen content in the water body. Conclusions: Pearson matrix predicts that agricultural land, built up, horticultural land and wasteland seem to be the foremost factors responsible for the deterioration of the water quality of the lake. Careful planning of land use is needed to bring significant reductions in nutrient exports from agriculture through various tributaries, in order to restore and maintain water quality of the lake. If this trend of agriculturization manifestation continues unabated, it will be difficult to restore the lake water quality and to subsequently correct ecological manifestation of eutrophication through which the lake is undergoing at present.

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Hokersar wetland suffers highly due by nutrient inputs from the catchment area, internal wetland processes and various types of anthropogenic pressures around. To characterize nutrient dynamics of the wetland, nitrogen (N) and phosphorus (P) samples were collected from six study sites in the Queen wetland of Kashmir Himalaya for a period of one year from Sep. 2012 to Aug. 2013. Clear spatial and temporal variations were observed among the recorded parameters (ammonical nitrogen, nitrate nitrogen, total orthophosphate phosphorus and total phosphorus) throughout the year. Ammonical nitrogen concentration was found to be maximum in winter (242.3±10.1 µg/L). Lower nitrate nitrogen was observed in summer, recording 259.6±35.3 µg/L. Both the forms of phosphorus registered higher values in summer and lower values in winter. Scatter plot showed highly significant values among all the parameters (R²=0.748 and 0.719). Principal component analysis showed highest principle component vector displacement among the sites IV and VI reflecting polluted nature of the sites. Further, higher Eigen-vector displacement values were due to ammonical nitrogen and nitrate nitrogen, registering values 3.36724 and 0.542639 respectively. Similarity matrix was highest between total phosphorus and ammonical nitrogen (92.9666%), followed by ammonical nitrogen and nitrate nitrogen making 58.5729%.

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The wheel animalcules, belonging to minor phylum Rotifera are the most important soft-bodied invertebrate pseudocoelomates, bilaterally symmetrical, metazoan protostomes ranging from 50 to 2,000 mm in size with three regions (corona, trunk and foot) in the body. Phylum Rotifera with cosmopolitan distribution has an estimate of about 2,030 identified species. Because of their great importance in the aquatic ecosystems, the existing literature on rotifers is quite considerable worldwide, yet comparatively scanty literature is available on the taxonomy and distribution of rotifers of Kashmir Himalaya. Therefore, in the present article an attempt has been made to document the historical review of rotifers of Kashmir Himalayan waters.

The present study was aimed to assess the impact of physico-chemical parameters of water on the rotifer community in Wular Lake, the largest freshwater lake in the Indian subcontinent. Water samples were collected between September, 2012 to August, 2014 from nine study sites. Rotifers were collected by filtering 100 liters of water through a nylon silk net having 75 meshes/ linear cm and preserved in 5% formalin. Rotifers were abundant during summer and lower diversity was observed during the winter. Kaiser-Meyer-Olkin (KMO) and Bartlett's test was also performed to check the significance of the all the variables with the rotifer species. KMO test reflects that the data can be preceded for PCA as the data reflects significant values. The physico-chemical parameters such as water temperature (19.3±8C°to 23.3 ± 9.9 C°), depth (1.7±0.8m to 4±1.7 m), pH (7.1±0.2 to 7.8±0.4) and total phosphate phosphorus (201±86.4 to 257.3±119.4 µg/l) strongly influenced the rotifer community in the lake.

Exhaustive studies on Cladocera, crustacean zooplankton, have been carried out at global level and till date 620 species of water fleas have been reported. Though there is much ambiguity among the recorded species of Cladocera, yet the group in India is very rich and diversified, with a record of 137 taxa. In the present study, all available but reliable literature (both published and unpublished) has been reviewed for all the waterbodies of Kashmir Himalaya, making an updated list of 79 taxa of Cladocera. Water fleas in the valley are represented by 6-8 families. Freshwater ecosystems of Kashmir are facing a challenging effect of eutrophication from the last few decades. Valley lakes in particular are facing threat of cultural eutrophication that has resulted in dominance of small bodied cladocerans over large ones in the region. In the present taxonomic survey there is a scope of more taxonomic revisions as three of the species reported so far seem to have doubtful existence.

The human interference and modification of landscape has occurred globally but has increased incidence and consequences in the developing countries mostly due the population growth, fragility of landscape and unplanned development. The aim of the study is to detect the land use changes between 1990-2010 using satellite images of IRS-IC LISS-III (2010) and LANDSAT TM (1990) and SOI topographic maps. During the 20 years all the three sites have shown major land use changes. Among these, site I has undergone positive changes into Cropland 46 ha (14.64%), Horticulture land 12 ha (3.82%), Built-up 2 ha (0.63%) while, the areas of site II has shown an alarming decrease in pasture land with 7 ha (2.22%), Sparse forest land 12 ha (3.82%). However, the site III has shown a remarkable decrease in the area of Dense forest land 56 ha (17.82%), water bodies 5 ha (1.59%) as well as depicts marked increase in the area of Scrub land 136 ha (43.31%), Pasture land 65 ha (20.70%). These changes have clearly established that the Hirpura wildlife sanctuary is under an imminent threat to its very existence. Thus, it becomes imperative that the government should prepare working plans for its conservation which has not taken yet.