Bray, John, Wasson, Robert J., Srivastava, Pradeep, and Ziegler, Alan D. (2023) Floods and Debris Flows in Ladakh: Past History and Future Hazards. In: Humbert-Droz, Blaise, Dame, Juliane, and Morup, Tashi, (eds.) Environmental Change and Development in Ladakh, Indian Trans-Himalaya. Advances in Asian Human-Environmental Research . Springer, Cham, Switzerland, pp. 31-52.

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Abstract

In August 2010, heavy rain triggered a series of debris flows, causing widespread destruction and loss of life in Leh, the largest town in Ladakh. In the light of this event, this essay presents an interdisciplinary perspective on flood history, climate change and disaster management in Ladakh and surrounding areas. In the first two sections, we summarise the geological evidence for earlier millennia, followed by a preliminary review of flood events in more recent recorded history. In the third section, we consider patterns of climate change, drawing on a range of different forms of evidence, including the reconstruction of past climates from meteorological records and tree-ring analysis. Finally, we introduce the concepts of Disaster Risk Reduction (DRR) and ‘disaster incubation’ – the idea that disasters are not solely a natural phenomenon but rather that human action and inaction contribute to the scale of misfortune caused by natural events.

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