The local communities in HKH region are
becoming more vulnerable to flood hazards. We already have
noticed in the past decade that a series of GLOF events had
occurred in recent years that has resulted in heavy damage to
property and infrastructure besides loss of valuable people
living in the HKH region.
In order to strengthen the capacity of vulnerable communities
to address the GLOF issue urgently in the scale that is needed,
the Glacier Project aims for the establishment of Early Warning
System (EWS) and develop adaptation strategies in the GLOF
prone areas. The delineation of glacier and glacial lake
inventory is a prime requirement to identify and update the
number, size, locations and other relevant characteristics of
glaciers, glacial and para-glacial lakes that drive GLOF/Flash
Flood events in Pakistan. This report (i) provides a status
update of the Glacier and Glacial/Paraglacial Lake Inventory in
the Catchments of Northern Pakistan using latest up-to-date
digital resources in Geographical Information System
Framework; (ii) evaluates the data accuracy based on the
topographic maps using declassified imagery; and (iii) analyzes
glacier changes from previous inventories and glacier
variability. In the long run, identification of GLOF hotspots at different levels of spatial and temporal risk may strengthen adaptive capacity of vulnerable communities and policy making agencies to address the GLOF risk.
Since the global warming and climate change is affecting HKH glaciers differently from rest of the glaciers around the world, this report responds to the urgent need to review available glacier inventories. This new inventory classifies the retreating, stable and surging glaciers and lays critical foundations for quantifying GLOF risk with cutting edge flood inundation modeling the next phase of this project.