@article{Dubey2023,

title = {Mass Movement Hazard and Exposure in the Himalaya},

author = {Saket Dubey and Ashim Sattar and Manish Kumar Goyal and Simon Allen and Holger Frey and Umesh K. Haritashya and Christian Huggel},

url = {https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1029/2022EF003253 https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1029/2022EF003253 https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2022EF003253},

doi = {10.1029/2022EF003253},

issn = {2328-4277},

year  = {2023},

date = {2023-01-01},

journal = {Earth's Future},

volume = {11},

issue = {9},

pages = {e2022EF003253},

publisher = {John Wiley & Sons, Ltd},

abstract = {Himalaya is experiencing frequent catastrophic mass movement events such as avalanches and landslides, causing loss of human lives and infrastructure. Millions of people reside in critical zones potentially exposed to such catastrophes. Despite this, a comprehensive assessment of mass movement exposure is lacking at a regional scale. Here, we developed a novel method of determining mass movement trajectories and applied it to the Himalayan Mountain ranges for the first time to quantify the exposure of infrastructure, waterways, roadways, and population in six mountain ranges, including Hindu Kush, Karakoram, western Himalaya, eastern Himalaya, central Himalaya, and Hengduan Shan. Our results reveal that the exposure of buildings and roadways to mass movements is highest in Karakoram, whereas central Himalaya has the highest exposed waterways. The hotspots of exposed roadways are concentrated in Nepal, the North Indian states of Uttarakhand, Himachal Pradesh, the Union Territory of Ladakh, and China's Sichuan Province. Our analysis shows that the population in the central Himalaya is currently at the highest exposure to mass movement impacts. Projected future populations based on Shared Socio-economic and Representative Concentration Pathways suggest that changing settlement patterns and emission scenarios will significantly influence the potential impact of these events on the human population. Assessment of anticipated secondary hazards (glacial lake outburst floods) shows an increase in probable headward impacts of mass movements on glacial lakes in the future. Our findings will support researchers, policymakers, stakeholders, and local governments in identifying critical areas that require detailed investigation for risk reduction and mitigation.},

keywords = {avalanche, Exposure, future hazard, Himalaya, landslides, mass movement},

pubstate = {published},

tppubtype = {article}

}

@article{Munoz-TorreroManchado2021,

title = {Three decades of landslide activity in western Nepal: new insights into trends and climate drivers},

author = {A Muñoz-Torrero Manchado and S Allen and J A Ballesteros-Cánovas and A Dhakal and M R Dhital and M Stoffel},

url = {https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10346-021-01632-6},

doi = {10.1007/s10346-021-01632-6},

issn = {1612-510X},

year  = {2021},

date = {2021-02-01},

journal = {Landslides},

pages = {1--15},

publisher = {Springer Science and Business Media LLC},

abstract = {In recent decades, landslide disasters in the Himalayas, as in other mountain regions, are widely reported to have increased. While some studies have suggested a link to increasing heavy rainfall under a warmer climate, others pointed to anthropogenic influences on slope stability, and increasing exposure of people and assets located in harm's way. A lack of sufficiently high-resolution regional landslide inventories, both spatially and temporally, has prevented any robust consensus so far. Focusing on Far-Western Nepal, we draw on remote sensing techniques to create a regional inventory of 26,350 single landslide events, of which 8778 date to the period 1992–2018. These events serve as a basis for the analyses of landslide frequency relationships and trends in relation to precipitation and temperature datasets. Results show a strong correlation between the annual number of shallow landslides and the accumulated monsoon precipitation ( r = 0.74). Furthermore, warm and dry monsoons followed by especially rainy monsoons produce the highest incidence of shallow landslides ( r = 0.77). However, we find strong spatial variability in the strength of these relationships, which is linked to recent demographic development in the region. This highlights the role of anthropogenic drivers, and in particular road cutting and land-use change, in amplifying the seasonal monsoon influence on slope stability. In parallel, the absence of any long-term trends in landslide activity, despite widely reported increase in landslide disasters, points strongly to increasing exposure of people and infrastructure as the main driver of landslide disasters in this region of Nepal. By contrast, no climate change signal is evident from the data.},

keywords = {Anthropogenic drivers, Exposure, Hazard, landslides, remote sensing, Trends},

pubstate = {published},

tppubtype = {article}

}