Landslide Atlas of India: Mapping, Monitoring and R&D studies using Remote Sensing data

FOCUS

This Atlas was prepared under the Disaster Management Support programme by the National Remote Sensing Centre (NRSC) of Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO), Hyderabad. It presents details of landslides in India during the 1998-2022 period including assessment of damage in specific locations.

During the 1998-2022 period, around 80,000 landslides were reported in the geospatial landslide inventory database maintained by the NRSC. The inventory, which is included in this atlas, includes three types of landslide records: seasonal, event-based and route-wise. Seasonal records cover the pan-India landslide database corresponding to the rainy seasons of 2014 and 2017. Details of some of the major triggering events such as the Kedarnath and Kerala disasters, and the Sikkim earthquake as well as a few large valley blocking landslides are covered under the event-based inventory. Details of landslides along certain routes of tourist and pilgrimage importance are covered under the route wise inventory.

NRSC primarily used satellite images to prepare the database. But in some instances, landslides mapped in this manner were validated on field or using news reports. The atlas also documents district-wise landslide exposure, measuring their effect on the population based on parameters including total households, labour, literacy, and livestock.

The 93-page document contains seven major sections: Introduction and Background; Landslide Disaster in India; Landslide Classification; Rapid Response to Landslide Disaster using EO Data; Landslide Inventory in India; Landslide Susceptibility Mapping and Districts-wise Landslide Risk Exposure; and Research & Development Studies in Landslides Studies.

    FACTOIDS

  1. Landslide risk in India is among the highest in the world, with an estimated loss of life numbering more than one person per 100 square kilometres per year. As per a 2018 article on global fatal landslides between 2004 and 2016, around 16 per cent of all landslide events triggered by rainfall happened in India.

  2. In India, landslides mostly occur in the monsoon, the atlas notes. The Himalayas and the Western Ghats are highly susceptible due to heavy rainfall and their hilly topography. Sporadic, out-of-season rainfall and earthquakes also cause landslides, especially in the Himalayan ranges. High density of population in the Ghats and prevalence of pilgrimage routes along the Himalayas increase landslide risk to people.

  3. The atlas identifies rainfall and litho-tectonic factors as the primary triggers of landslides in the country. The Northwest Himalayas experienced the largest share of landslides in India (66.5 per cent), followed by the Northeast Himalayas (18.8 per cent) and the Western Ghats (14.7 per cent).

  4. Tha atlas classifies landslides as per the type of movement (fall, topple, slide, lateral spread, flow, complex) and type of material (bed rock, coarse and fine engineering soils).

  5. As per the landslide inventory database maintained by the National Remote Sensing Centre, Mizoram, Uttarakhand, Tripura, Jammu and Kashmir, and Kerala recorded highest landslide numbers between 1998 and 2022.

  6. A district-wise project mapping 147 districts across 17 states and two union territories showed that exposure to landslide risk (based on socio-economic factors) was highest in Uttarakhand's Rudraprayag district. It was followed by Tehri Garhwal, Thrissur, Rajauri, Palakkad and Poonch.


    Focus and Factoids by Jahanara Shaikh.

AUTHOR

Nirmala Jain, Priyom Roy, Tapas Ranjan Martha, Punit Jalan and Aishwarya Nanda

COPYRIGHT

National Remote Sensing Centre, Indian Space Research Organisation, Department of Space, Hyderabad

PUBLICATION DATE

Feb, 2023

TAGS

#environment #landslide #himalayas #western-ghats

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