Study of Snow Cover Dynamics of Pinder Watershed in Central Himalaya using Remote Sensing and GIS Techniques
N. C. Pant, Manish Kumar, J. S. Rawat, Neha Rani
Abstract
This paper is an attempt to examine the dynamics of snow cover using Normalized Difference Snow Index (NDSI) in Pinder Watershed, Central Himalaya, India. Landsat satellite imageries of three different time periods, i.e., Landsat TM of 1990, Landsat TM of 1999 and Landsat TM 2011 were used to quantify snow cover. The geographical distribution of snow cover reveals that in 1990 and 1999 about 9.40% (176.20 km2) and 8.60% (161.08 km2)area of the Pinder Watershed was under snow cover while in 2011 the snow cover was found 7.80% (147.50 km2).These data suggest that due to global warming about 28.7 km2 snow cover of Pinder Watershed has been converted into non-snow cover area at an average rate of 1.36 km²/year during the last two decades, i.e., in between 1990 to 2011.