Future prediction of existing glacial lake's size in the Himalaya by Markov model and glacial surface topography

Glacial lakes in the Himalayas are increasing in size and number at an alarming rate, with the majority of lakes concentrated in the eastern and central parts of the mountain range. This research focuses on the future prediction of regional-scale glacial lake size in the entire Himalayan mountain range to avoid future glacial lake outburst flood (GLOF). Here, we used Landsat TM and OLI images, Google Earth imageries, Cartosat DEM, and SRTM DEM, and used some techniques: average lake size change rate, Markov model and glacial surface topography to extract glacial lake size change and future prediction of lake size. A total of 9675 individual glacial lakes were noticed during the study period (1990-2020), out of which the lakes present constantly throughout the study period (with size > 0.01 km(2)) were added in this study.1This study used two methods (i.e., Markov model and Glacier surface topography) to predict future lake size and identified 191 and 94 critical lakes that are most at risk of enlargement in Markov and glacial surface topography, respectively. Moreover, 443 critical lakes in Himalaya is distributed as 227 in the eastern Himalayas, 195 in the central Himalayas, and 21 in the western Himalayas. The findings suggest that the number and size of glacial lakes will continue to increase, posing an even greater risk of GLOFs in the future.

Automated summary

Glacial lakes in the Himalayas are rapidly increasing in both number and size, particularly in the eastern and central regions. This study used various techniques to predict the future size of these lakes and identified a significant number of critical lakes that are at high risk of enlargement and glacial lake outburst floods (GLOFs).