Unveiling the Spatial Heterogeneity in Uttarakhand Through Geomorphodiversity for Sustainable LULC Practices and its Implications on Seismicity

Uttarakhand located in the Himalayas at the dynamic intersection of Indian and Eurasian tectonic plates, is severely prone to a wide range of natural disasters. The genesis of landscape settings primarily relies on regional geology, geomorphology, stream drainage networks, and lithology which also influences the hazard susceptibility. In the present study, the geomorphodiversity index (GMI) of Uttarakhand was evaluated using geodiversity (Geo_i), drainage density diversity (D_i), and morphometric diversity (M_i) indices, and classified into five classes (very low, low, moderate, high, very high). The significance of GMI was assessed with seismicity and land use land cover (LULC). The result shows that high to very high class GMI covers 21.03% and 8.52% area of Uttarakhand, mostly situated in the Higher Himalayan zone and Tethys Himalayan zone, characterized by high relative relief, deep valleys, and ridges. More than 75% of earthquake events in each GMI class were at a depth of 20 km or less, which reveals that different rates of seismicity occurred in moderate and very low classes of GMI. The spatial distribution of land use land cover (LULC) underscores the significance of GMI, particularly in areas with high susceptibility. The LULC distribution indicates that a very high class of GMI regions is associated with minimum tree cover, while bare land and rangeland majorly dominate the moderate to high class of GMI.