Rare flood scenarios for a rapidly growing high-mountain city: Pokhara, Nepal

Fischer, Melanie; Brettin, Jana; Roessner, Sigrid; Walz, Ariane; Fort, Monique; Korup, Oliver

doi:10.5194/nhess-22-3105-2022

Cited by 4 publications

(2 citation statements)

References 52 publications

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“…As more and more infrastructure is being built in upstream areas and close to river channels, vulnerabilities are expected to increase. Future studies should investigate potential flood impacts on built-up areas as well as hydropower infrastructure, which often require different model setups than for environments with infrastructure only including roads and single houses (Fischer et al, 2022).…”

Section: Downstream Impactsmentioning

confidence: 99%

A comprehensive and version-controlled database of glacial lake outburst floods in High Mountain Asia

Shrestha,

Steiner,

Shrestha

et al. 2023

Earth Syst. Sci. Data

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Abstract. Glacial lake outburst floods (GLOFs) have been intensely investigated in High Mountain Asia (HMA) in recent years and are the most well-known hazard associated with the cryosphere. As glaciers recede and surrounding slopes become increasingly unstable, such events are expected to increase, although current evidence for an increase in events is ambiguous. Many studies have investigated individual events, and while several regional inventories exist, they either do not cover all types of GLOF or are geographically constrained. Further, downstream impacts are rarely discussed. Previous inventories have relied on academic sources and have not been combined with existing inventories of glaciers and lakes. In this study, we present the first comprehensive inventory of GLOFs in HMA, including details on the time of their occurrence, processes of lake formation and drainage involved, and downstream impacts. We document 697 individual GLOFs that occurred between 1833 and 2022. Of these, 23 % were recurring events from just three ephemeral ice-dammed lakes. In combination, the documented events resulted in 6906 fatalities of which 906 can be attributed to 24 individual GLOF events, which is 3 times higher than a previous assessment for the region. The integration of previous inventories of glaciers and lakes within this database will inform future assessments of potential drivers of GLOFs, allowing more robust projections to be developed. The database and future, updated versions are traceable and version-controlled and can be directly incorporated into further analysis. The database is available at https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.7271187 (Steiner and Shrestha, 2023), while the code including a development version is available on GitHub.

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Section: Downstream Impactsmentioning

confidence: 99%

A comprehensive and version-controlled database of glacial lake outburst floods in High Mountain Asia

Shrestha,

Steiner,

Shrestha

et al. 2023

Earth Syst. Sci. Data

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…As more and more infrastructure is being built in upstream areas and close to river channels, vulnerabilities are expected to increase. Future studies should investigate potential flood impacts on built up areas, which often require different model setups than for environments with infrastructure only including roads and single houses (Fischer et al, 2022).…”

Section: Downstream Impactsmentioning

confidence: 99%

HMAGLOFDB v1.0 – a comprehensive and version controlled database of glacier lake outburst floods in high mountain Asia

Shrestha

Steiner

Shrestha

et al. 2023

Preprint

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Abstract. Glacier lake outburst floods (GLOFs) have been intensely investigated in High Mountain Asia (HMA) in recent years and are the most well-known hazard associated with the cryosphere. As glaciers recede and surrounding slopes become increasingly unstable, such events are expected to increase, although current evidence for an increase in events is ambiguous. Many studies have investigated individual events and while several regional inventories exist, they either do not cover all types of GLOF or are geographically constrained. Further, downstream impacts are rarely discussed. Previous inventories have relied on academic sources and have not been combined with existing inventories of glaciers and lakes. In this study, we present the first comprehensive inventory of GLOFs in HMA, including details on the time of their occurrence, processes of lake formation and drainage involved as well as downstream impacts. We document 682 individual GLOFs that occurred between 1833 and 2022. Of these, 20 % were recurring events from just three ephemeral ice-dammed lakes. In combination, the documented events resulted in 6907 fatalities, with 6000 of these linked to a single GLOF, three times higher than a previous assessment for the region. The integration of previous inventories of glaciers and lakes within this database will inform future assessments of potential drivers of GLOFs, allowing more robust projections to be developed. The database and future, updated versions, are traceable, version controlled and can be directly incorporated into further analysis.

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A geospatial modelling for glacial lake outburst floods susceptibility analysis in the central Himalayas

Thapliyal,

Kimothi

2024

Journal of Water and Climate Change

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Glacial lakes have increased throughout a significant portion of the Himalayan region, and hence the present study focuses on a geospatial modelling approach for analysing the susceptibility to glacier lake outburst flood (GLOF) in the central Himalayan region. Multitemporal satellite imageries such as Landsat-TM and Sentinel-2 were taken. The hydrodynamic compatibility tool, i.e. HEC-RAS 5.0, was used for GLOF prediction, and the lake volume and surface area were calculated using established empirical equations. The breach fails and flood flow were approximated, and arising uncertainties were analysed with three outburst scenarios. The number of lakes and their sizes have significantly increased according to the findings of the study. Of these, the Vasundhara Lake (VL), which is located at 4,676 m above the sea level, is assigned to the hazardous category for more examination. It has been found that the lake's area expanded over the past three decades (i.e. 1994–2020), rising from 0.15 to 0.29 km2. The study demonstrates that, in the worst-case situation, infrastructure along riverbanks may be susceptible to harm. The study provides information on the potential effects of GLOF events in the study region that might be used in early warning systems and water resource management plans.

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Rare flood scenarios for a rapidly growing high-mountain city: Pokhara, Nepal

Cited by 4 publications

References 52 publications

A comprehensive and version-controlled database of glacial lake outburst floods in High Mountain Asia

A comprehensive and version-controlled database of glacial lake outburst floods in High Mountain Asia

HMAGLOFDB v1.0 – a comprehensive and version controlled database of glacier lake outburst floods in high mountain Asia

A geospatial modelling for glacial lake outburst floods susceptibility analysis in the central Himalayas

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