The Himalayan region is vulnerable to climate change, which is triggering extreme hydrological events. To understand the impact of climate emission scenarios on different hydrological flow dynamics of the Himalayan region, a thorough hydrological investigation is needed for improved water resource management. Hence, this research exemplifies the use of remote sensing, modelling techniques, and recent climate projections (CMIP5 and CMIP6) for the assessment of hydrological flow dynamics in the central Himalayan catchment. The SWAT model is calibrated/validated using gauge observation and satellite altimetry-derived river discharge and used for long-term hydrological simulations . CMIP6 models predicted that there would be a steady rise in high flows in all the projected scenarios. Flow duration curve for CMIP5 and CMIP6 models depicted that high flow of short duration would be frequent in future. The environmental flow components (EFCs) were calculated using the indicator of hydrologic alteration tool. The SWAT model simulations of hydrological and EFCs under CMIP6 climate projections are found to be significantly more vulnerable to climate warming than CMIP5, which could be due to socioeconomic pathway emission scenarios.
Geomorphic settings of an area provide valuable supplementary information regarding groundwater recharge, their occurrence and distribution. The geomorphic settings of the Lower Subansiri Basin can broadly be represented by three distinct geomorphic units viz., structural hills, piedmont zone and alluvial plain. While the elevation, slope, lithology, drainage pattern and various relevant morphometric parameters vary from one geomorphic unit to another, the conditions of recharge and discharge, occurrence and distribution of groundwater also differ in different units. The structural hills occupying only 4.5% of the area along the north-western boundary represent a high run-off zone characterised by steep slope and fairly dense parallel to sub-parallel drainage. The piedmont zone, built up by the coalescence of alluvial fan deposits, represents 7.7% of the area occurring in a long and narrow NE-SW trending steeply sloping belt along the foothills of Arunachal Pradesh. Owing to high permeability, this zone hardly retains any water and hence forms a high recharge zone with relatively deeper groundwater level. The alluvial plain, covering 87.8% of the basin area and characterised by a gentle slope, serves both as recharge and discharge areas where groundwater occurs relatively close to the ground surface.
Panel diagrams prepared for the Lower Subansiri Basin showing the thickness and extent of granular zones display that the unconsolidated alluvial sediments are primarily composed of sands of various grade and gravel with minor amounts of silt and clay. The sand-gravel isolith maps showing the cumulative thickness of the granular zones down to the depth of 40 m reveal that the subsurface formations in a major part of the alluvial plain of the Lower Subansiri Basin are entirely represented by granular zones. The granular zone in most parts of the area forms one single aquifer system where groundwater mostly occurs under unconfined to semi unconfined conditions. Due to the presence of thin clay and/or sandy clay lenses at shallow depths, however, the single aquifer system gets locally dissipated into multiple aquifer system where, barring the uppermost aquifer, groundwater mostly occur under semiconfined to confined conditions. The overall regional variation of depth to water level, from the piedmont zone in the north and north-west to the alluvial plain of the south and southeast, is controlled by the prevalent geomorphic settings of the area. The disposition of water table contours of the area indicates that the configuration of groundwater table closely controls to that of general topography of the area. The steeper hydraulic gradient observed to be present in the north and north-east indicates the possible control of the characteristically distinguished geomorphic setting, i.e., topography, relief and lithology.
Subansiri River is the largest tributary of the Brahmaputra River running through the Indian states of Assam and Arunachal Pradesh, and Tibet, the Autonomous Region of China. The Subansiri River is 442 km long with a drainage basin of 32,640 km2 and it contributes approximately 7.92% of the Brahmaputra’s total flow. Sequential Channel shifting has been witnessed as the most important characteristic of the Subansiri River of Assam. The detailed study on channel migration of the present course of the Subansiri River through the upper floodplain of Brahmaputra valley indicates that the area is under active erosion for a long time. Therefore, an attempt has been made to understand the relationship between the rate of channel migration and successive land use/land cover changes in its surrounding floodplain area. The Support Vector Machine (SVM) and the Artificial Neural Network (ANN) algorithms are applied on Landsat images of the years 1973, 1988, 2001, and 2017 for generating land use/land cover maps through supervised classification technique. The overall accuracy of the land use/land cover classification ranges between 81% (for the year 1988) and 84% (for the year 2017). The land use/land cover maps show an increase in the built-up area and a decrease in the agricultural area. The change has been observed vis-a-vis channel migration indicating that the migration directly affects the floodplain habitats which in turn affects the land use, Findings of this study highlight geomorphological instabilities of the study area and the vulnerability of the habitations residing near the Subansiri river.
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