Snow Cover and Snowline Variation in Relation to Land Surface Temperature in Spiti Valley, Himachal Pradesh, India

Md Arif Husain, Pankaj Kumar, Anju Singh, V A V Raman, Rachna Dua, Swati Thakur

Abstract


Spiti Valley, a cold desert mountain is located in the Trans Himalaya region where snow cover is a dominant type of land cover. Characterized, as a rain shadow area where precipitation occurs in the form of snowfall and almost negligible rainfall. Thus, snowmelt water is a single source of freshwater which is used in agricultural and household activities by mountain dwellers. The main objective of the study is to determine the effects of Land Surface Temperature (LST) on snow cover and snow line position in Spiti Valley.  This study is based on geospatial techniques in which Landsat imagery was the main source of data for snow cover, snow line position, and Land Surface Temperature (LST) analysis. It includes Operational Land Imager/Thermal Infrared Sensor (OLI / TIRS) and Thematic Mapper (TM) scenes of the twelve months for the reference years 1990 and 2015. Snow cover was extracted from January to December; using Normalised Difference Snow Index (NDSI). According to NDSI result, the average snow cover was 4, 68,998.50 ha (61.68%) in 1990 and 3, 69,676.4 ha (48.71%) in 2015. Approximately 98,422.08 ha (0.51%) of snow cover was converted into a non-snow cover area at an average rate of 3,937 ha/year. Analysis of the position of the snow line indicates that it moved upward 445.11 meters in Spiti Valley during the study period. In 1990, the snow line was visible at the height of 5,159.37 meters at the end of the summer, but reached at 5,604.48 meters height in 2015, marking the loss of snow accumulation in the lower heights.

Keywords


spiti, show cover

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