Land Cover, Land Use Change and Its Implication to Disasters in the Hindu Kush Himalayan Region

The 3500 km long Hindu-Kush Himalaya (HKH) region is one of the dynamic regions of the world. Natural and human-induced hazards impose threats to lives and infrastructures in this region. This region has four of the five most crucial yet vulnerable water towers in Asia. The ten major river basins in the HKH have a population of around 1.9 billion in the year 2015 with about 240 million in the mountains and hills. The existing geo-climatic characteristics of the region, rapidly increasing urbanization, environmental degradation, anthropogenic activities, and socioeconomic conditions, are increasing citizens’ exposure to and risk from natural hazards and resulting in more frequent, intense, and costly disasters. Moreover, this region is extensively experiencing the negative effect of climate change, i.e., glacier melting forming glacial lakes. The formation of glacial lakes due to permafrost melting poses a high threat of Glacial Lake Outburst Flood (GLOF). This region has already witnessed a number of GLOF events in recent decades. It is found that one large event, i.e., GLOF can change the whole mountain landscape along with land use and land cover (LULC) changes. Similarly, the existing topography, roads excavated at the higher gradient, and the agricultural lands on the steeper slopes have been the hotspots for the large number of landslides There is a significant contribution of anthropogenic activities for LULC change. Therefore, this study aims to analyze the changing pattern of LULC due to human interferences and natural processes. This study will be helpful to understand the mountain dynamics and its relationship with increasing disasters in the HKH region. The number of pixels with a population density of over 100,000 per square KM was 122 in 2000, which was increased to 960 pixels in 2020. Overall, the data shows that the population density has increased in recent years in the HKH region. The HKH region had almost 20.85% (4075 of 19,547) major disaster events recorded in the past 32 years (between 1990 and 2022) in the Em-DAT global database, with death tolls of more than 28.71% in the region.