Kashmir Floods Case Study

Floods in Kashmir Valley
Sapavath Amitha, Anurag Dixit, Utkarsh Pandey
Keywords: (Floods, Wetlands, Disaster, Hazard, Kashmir Valley)

ABSTRACT
The valley of Kashmir has been constantly experiencing major seasonal floods since ancient times. Ever expanding urbanization catering to the demands of growing population has incessantly disturbed the natural flow path of the rivers leading to surging the magnitude of hazard. Therefore Kashmir valley has been studied in this paper and a case study on 2014 Kashmir floods is presented.
1. Introduction
Recently there was heavy precipitation in Kashmir valley during September 2014 causing devastating floods in that took life of about 600 people living in India and Pakistan.
There have also been similar

In 879AD, there was a devastating flood due to the landslide of the khandanyar mountains below Baramula[1], because the channel of the Jhelum river blocked a large part of the valley. However, a great calamity flood occurred in 1893 with 52 hrs of incessant and warm rainfall. A greatest flood ever known hit the valley in 1903, transformed the city into a lake. For the next quarter of a century, as some preventive measures had put on the place there was no record of a major flood event. Pakistan-occupied Kashmir was mainly affected in 1929’s major flood. In 1950, nearly 100 people lost their lives due to the overflow of the Jhelum river. A massive glacial flood originated from 4 days of continuous rain whipped the valley & the city in 1959. In 1992’s flood, around 200 people lost their lives & 60,000 people got marooned. There was a half an hour cloud burst, which lead to flash floods in the Leh-Ladakh region in 2010 causing extensive

2014 Kashmir Floods
It started to rain heavily in Jammu and Kashmir from 2nd September onwards i.e. in the last stage of monsoon in India. This heavy rainfall caused the floods in various areas of J&K and adjoining areas of Pakistan. Apart from floods, landslides were also triggered by the precipitation. These floods turned to be highly hazardous and took life of about 600 people in India and Pakistan[2].
Flow rates in both the tributaries Jhelum and Chenab was considerably high and a discharge of about 70000 m3/sec was recorded in Jhelum on 8th September (Fig 2)[3] against a normal discharge of 25000 m3/sec (Fig 1)[3]with the rivers flowing around 2m above the danger mark in some