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Landslides triggered by the June 2013 extreme rainfall event in parts of Uttarakhand state, India

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Abstract

Extreme rainfall during 15–17 of June 2013 triggered numerous landslides and caused widespread damage and loss of life in the Bhagirathi and Alaknanda river valleys, with Kedarnath town bearing the brunt of the disaster. In this paper, we present a corroboration of observations gathered from very high resolution satellite data which indicated that two events in close succession caused damage to the Kedarnath town. While the flooding on June 16, 2013 was due to the reactivation of an old landslide that resulted in breaching of the river training wall, breaching of the moraine dammed Chorabari lake on June 17, 2013 caused further flooding and damage to the Kedarnath town. We also prepared a detailed landslide inventory using multi-temporal Resourcesat-2 images (5.8 m) acquired before and after the event in order to avoid issues related to cloud and shadow. A total of 6,013 landslides were mapped, out of which 3,472 landslides with 30.4 km2 area were classified as new ones, 1,137 landslides with 9.1 km2 area were classified as old ones and 1,401 landslides with 11.7 km2 area were classified as reactivated ones. The frequency-area statistics of the mapped landslides shows near completeness of this event-based landslide inventory. The debris brought down by rivers from these landslides, particularly from the glaciated deposits in upstream areas, caused severe river bank erosion in downstream areas.

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Acknowledgments

We thank the DSC team and NDC, NRSC for providing necessary input data. Dr. Ajanta Goswami, Scientist, IIRS/ISRO, Dehradun is thanked for support during the fieldwork and sharing few ground photographs.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. National Remote Sensing Centre (NRSC), Department of Space, Government of India, Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO), Hyderabad, 500 037, India

    Tapas R. Martha, Priyom Roy, K. Babu Govindharaj, K. Vinod Kumar, P. G. Diwakar & V. K. Dadhwal

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  1. Tapas R. Martha
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  2. Priyom Roy
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  3. K. Babu Govindharaj
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  4. K. Vinod Kumar
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  5. P. G. Diwakar
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  6. V. K. Dadhwal
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Correspondence to Tapas R. Martha.

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Martha, T.R., Roy, P., Govindharaj, K.B. et al. Landslides triggered by the June 2013 extreme rainfall event in parts of Uttarakhand state, India. Landslides 12, 135–146 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10346-014-0540-7

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10346-014-0540-7

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