Assessment of the water quality of Glacier-fed lake Neel Tal of Garhwal Himalaya, India

Abstract

Neel Tal is a glacier-fed lake, located at an altitude of 4,382 m above m.s.l. in the Garhwal Himalaya, India. This lake is located at 30 Km from Gangotri, the world famous shrine of Hindus and 13 Km from the snout of Gangotri glacier known as "Gaumukh", that has been considered as the origin place of Holy River 'Ganga'. Assessment of surface water quality of a high altitude lake is important for providing drinking water to the trekkers, sages, and consumption by wildlife along with its conservation and management. Water Quality Index (WQI) method was applied to assess the water quality of Neel Tal, using 18 water quality parameters. The data for all the physical, chemical and biological parameters were collected in the months of June and August for a period of two years during 2014 and 2015 due to the accessibility of the lake as it remains under freezed condition for most of the time. The value of WQI was estimated to be 17.85 based on all the water quality parameters, which categorized the quality of water as 'excellent' during the study period. The coliform test also supported the findings of water quality of Neel Tal by WQI method.

Environmental factors affecting the diversity of psychrophilic microbial community in the high altitude snow-fed lake Hemkund, India

“…Similar observations were also reported by Sharma and Kumar (2017) for Satopanth Lake, Kumar et al. (2019) for Dodi Tal, Kumar and Sharma (2019) for Neel Tal, and Deep et al. (2020) for Hemkund Lake.…”

“…The low temperature of water and air is because of cold winds, snow and ice that is the source of water and location of the lake at high altitude. Similar observations were also reported by Sharma and Kumar (2017) for Satopanth Lake, Kumar et al. (2019) for Dodi Tal, Kumar and Sharma (2019) for Neel Tal, and Deep et al.…”

Water quality assessment of Loktak Lake, Northeast India using 2-D hydrodynamic modelling

“…Pandu Bodhan Lake in Andhra Pradesh shows much higher average BOD (60.319 mg/L) than the present study. The other remaining lakes namely, Anchar Lake in Kashmir, Dal Lake in Kashmir Hemkund Lake in Garhwal Himalaya, Khushalsar Lake in Kashmir Kuntbhyog Lake in Himachal Pradesh, Neel Tal Lake in Garhwal Himalaya, Prashar Lake in Himachal Pradesh and Rewalsar Lake in Himachal Pradesh shows generally similar range of BOD as compared to the present study [35][36][37][38].…”

“…Fig. 9 Distribution of simulated BOD throughout the Loktak Lake a summer b rainy c winter seasons Table 1 Comparison of BOD and DO of present study with other freshwater lakes in India a Najar and Khan [34] b Deep et al [35] c Thakur et al [36] d Kumar and Sharma [37] e Solanki, Hussain and Raja [38] Lake BOD DO Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material.…”

A brief overview of the application of pollution monitoring indices on Amrit Ganga river, Uttarakhand, India

“…(Mishra et al 2013 [27, 29, 38, 39, 30 37] . According to Kumar et al 2019 [32] assessing the water quality of high altitude lake is essential so that trekkers, sages, and wildlife can consume it. Himalayan rivers are a source of clean drinking water for the majority of Indian states, are less studied due to poor connectivity and harsh terrain.…”