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Landslide Susceptibility Zonation along National Highway 1D from Sonamarg to Kargil, North Western Himalaya

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Journal of the Geological Society of India

Abstract

The National Highway 1D from Sonamarg to Kargil is known as one of the most landslide susceptible areas in Kashmir and Ladakh divisions. The present study aims to delineate landslide susceptibility zones along National Highway 1D from Sonamarg to Kargil, northwestern (NH) Himalaya. Based on landslide influencing geo-environmental factors such as slope angle, land use/land cover, distance to faults, precipitation, soil, slope aspect, lithology, altitude, distance to streams, and distance to road, a detailed landslide susceptible map is prepared. A weighted pairwise comparison matrix is generated using the Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP). The geo-environmental factors and their derived weights through AHP were then overlaid using the index overlay module in ArcGIS 10.2 supplemented by MS Excel and MATLAB. The relationships between the conditional and trigger factors was carried out by analyzing landslide events. The results show that the area of 913.55 km2 is covered by high and very high landslide susceptibility zones constituting 55% along NH 1D from Sonmarg to Kargil. These are the most tortuous and rugged zones with high occurrence and impact of landslides. The study also identified and mapped a total of 317 landslides along National Highway 1D through rigorous multiple field surveys and secondary sources. There is a frequent incidence of traffic disruptions along the road. Thus there is an urgent need to mitigate the landslide hazard particularly to avert the disruption from Sonamarg to Kargil road, which causes huge inconvenience in terms of human and economic losses.

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Acknowledgmwnt

The authors express their sincere acknowledgement to Indian Council of Social Science Research, Govt. of India for the research grant in the form of JRF to the Aadil M. Nanda. The authors would like to express their sincere gratitude to the Department of Geography, University of Kashmir, Srinagar for providing the research facility. The authors are grateful to Dr. Aadil Hamid, Dr. Ibrahim Khaja, Mr. Fayaz A. Lone working in the education department for their helpful inputs. Thanks are also due to those experts whose subjective knowledge proved productivity for applying AHP method for this study. The authors also thank the reviewers for their valuable comments and suggestions that helped in reshaping of this research article.

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  1. Department of Geography & Regional Development, University of Kashmir, 190 006, Srinagar, India

    Aadil M. Nanda, Zahoor ul Hassan, Pervez Ahmed & T. A. Kanth

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Nanda, A.M., ul Hassan, Z., Ahmed, P. et al. Landslide Susceptibility Zonation along National Highway 1D from Sonamarg to Kargil, North Western Himalaya. J Geol Soc India 99, 570–577 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12594-023-2346-5

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