Hiccups in the Himalayas Reading the Warning Signs in Uttarakhand

Joshimath’s location on the middle slope of a hill, built on the debris of an ancient landslide triggered by an earthquake, contributes to its vulnerability to natural disasters. In this article, Priyanka Vadrevu says there is an urgent need to focus on the preventive measures to protect the endangered ecology of Joshimath and nearby areas. Large-scale afforestation plans need to be undertaken to boost soil binding and holding capacity which will eventually recharge underground aquifers as a portable source of water and also will fill the voids in rocks, enhancing the land resistance.

- Priyanka Vadrevu

Joshimath, also known as Kartikeyapura named after Kartikeya, the God of Katyuri kings and the son of Lord Shiva, is the ancient and picturesque town in the Chamoli district of Uttarakhand, which has been breaking for some time now, however, the urgent pleas to mend it has been ignored every time. The town lies in seismic zone V, which makes it the most active earthquake prone area in the Indian Himalayan geographical region and is anyway precariously positioned when it comes to frequent as well as high-intensity earthquakes.

The Himalayan biome works in a very complex manner compared to the other biomes on the planet. Further, the geosphere (land), hydrosphere (water) and biosphere (ecology) are all the combined components of the Himalayan mountains and they keep interacting with each other continuously and comprehensively in the young HinduKush Himalayan (HKH) region. Being an active plate tectonic collision zone it adds onto the continuity of geographical events, majorly disastrous (flash floods, avalanches, landslides, earthquakes, debris flow, etc.) which results in the loss of human lives, flora & fauna, and livestock on the third pole of the earth.

The land subsidence being witnessed in Uttarakhand’s Joshimath in 2023 has triggered an ecological and humanitarian crisis, and it arises from the complex mechanism of Himalayan plates active for almost over a century now when the area was formed by debris of a landslide that happened at the time.