Geoscience Reference
In-Depth Information
(Mohanty 1994, Minakshi et al. 1999, Brahmabhatt et al. 2000, Chauhan
et al. 2003). In the Himalaya, a variety of changes have emerged in the
traditional resource utilization structure mainly in response to population
growth and resultant increased demand of natural resources, ineffective
technology transfer, market forces, inappropriate land tenure policies,
faulty environmental conservation programs, irrational rural developmental
schemes, and increasing economic and political marginalization, during
the recent years (Hamilton 1987, Tiwari and Joshi 1997). These emerging
negative trends in the socio-economic profile have resulted in rapid
exploitation and transformation of land resources and largescale land-use
changes in the region (Tiwari 1995, Joshi and Gairola 2004). Under the
impact of various land-use systems, the land and whole environment of a
geographical region changes positively or negatively. The impact of some
land-use changes is limited to the area in which they are operated while
that of others reaches far in the surrounding ecosystems (Kostrowicki 1983,
Sharma et al. 2001, Sharma et al. 2003, Scheling 1988). The extensive land-
use changes in the Himalaya have not only disrupted the fragile ecological
balance of the watersheds in the region through deforestation, erosion,
landslides, hydrological disruptions, depletion of genetic resources, but
have also threatened the livelihood security and community sustainability
in mountains as well as in adjoining plains ecosystem (Tiwari 2000, Tiwari
and Joshi 2002, 2005). Land-use degradation due to climate change affecting
water resources as drying up of natural water springs and decreasing trends
of streams discharge and as a whole triggering other hydrological hazards
such as high runoff, fl ash fl oods, river-line fl oods and non-seismic landslide,
etc. which are mainly responsible for several socio-economic consequences
in mountainous terrain (Ives 1989, Valdiya and Bartarya 1989, Cruz 1992,
Jain et al. 1994, Sing 2006, Rawat et al. 2012).
Methodology
The study comprises mainly two components, (a) laboratory/desk study
and (b) fi eld investigations. The procedure adopted has been outlined in
Fig. 11.2 depicting that the study was carried out through GIS database
management system (DMS). GIS-DMS is a set of computer programs for
managing an integrated spatial and attribute database for such a task as
map and data input storage, search, retrieval, manipulation and output.
Existing DMS is constituted of four different GIS modules consisting of
spatial map layers with their attribute data. These four GIS modules are:
climate informatics, land-use informatics, hydro-informatics and agro-
informatics as described below:
Search WWH ::
Custom Search