Himalayan Flood Hazards : Analyses on Climate Change and Fluvial Hydrology

This book presents the autogenic and allogenic consequences of Himalayan floods on a spatio-temporal scale. Himalayan flooding has become an environmental issue in recent years. The monsoon, non-monsoon and hybrid floods are reactivated year after year, causing heart-rending human tragedy and emerging as a disaster over the entire Himalayan terrain, from higher altitudes to the foothills. Along with climatic consequences, engineering constructions, land-use practices, unscientific boulder excavation, and a lack of river buffer zone maintenance impressively govern the devastating layout of floods in different modes. The most geo-tectonically and ecologically sensitive Himalayan regions face natural calamities such as intense earthquakes, massive landslides, glacier lake outburst floods (GLOF), cloudbursts and flash floods occurring in a devastating form. Recent Himalayan floods have been characterized by a "deadly cocktail" of rapid climate change, geological fragility, and aggressive infrastructure development, causing multiple types of disasters, particularly during the monsoon season, and river morphological dynamics, such as channel shift, accelerated bank erosion, channel widening, and substantial sediment deposition in Himalayan rivers, may intensify the loss of human resources, ecology and the area’s economy. However, the increase in flood frequency and coverage area has led to the rehabilitation of human beings. This book encompasses the geo-environmental and climatic consequences in flood genesis from the higher levels to the foothill areas of the Himalayan arc, and includes case studies as evidence of flood effects on channel morphology, ecology, human behaviour, rehabilitation and the economy.

Dr. Mery Biswas: Dr. Biswas is an Associate Professor in the Department of Geography at Presidency University, Kolkata. She completed her Ph.D. under Prof. S. C. Mukhopadhyay at the University of Calcutta in 2009, focusing on landforms and land use, with special emphasis on fluvial aggradation–degradation processes and landform deformation. Her research spans multiple approaches to morphotectonics and fluvial geomorphology (including field-based methods, instrumental survey techniques, analytical models, and micro-landform analysis) as well as contemporary landscape hazards. She investigates diverse morphological regimes, landscape change, and hydro-sediment interactions from the Himalayan foothills to higher altitudes, examining riverscape dynamics and hazard perspectives across different terrain settings. Her ongoing research focuses on applied tectonics and fluvial landscape studies, sediment ecology, and emerging geo-hazard patterns and environmental issues in Himalayan terrain. As Principal Investigator, she successfully completed a DST-SERB project (2021–2024), resulting in three international journal articles and one book. In 2025, she was awarded an ICSSR project as a Co-Investigator. She has published extensively on flood hazards and recurrent geohazards driven by autogenic and allogenic factors. Her expertise includes riverscape dynamics, hazard response, tectonic interactions, and compound-hazard assessment, with a particular interest in links between riverscapes and infrastructure, riverine water–sediment health, and adjacent landscape suitability.
 
Dr. Arun Mondal: Dr. Mondal is an accomplished academic and researcher in Geography, specializing in hydrology, climate change, and remote sensing. He is currently an Assistant Professor in the Department of Geography at the University of Allahabad (a Central University), Prayagraj, India, where he has been engaged in teaching, research, and academic mentoring since 2023. He earned his B.Sc. and first M.Sc. degrees in Geography from the University of Calcutta, Kolkata, India, and his second M.Sc. in Geo-information Science and Earth Observation (a joint programme) from the University of Twente, the Netherlands, and the Indian Institute of Remote Sensing, Dehradun, India. He received his Ph.D. in Water Resources Development and Management from the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Roorkee, India. He also completed postdoctoral research at the University of South Carolina, USA, supported by the SERB Indo–US Postdoctoral Fellowship and the World Bank. His research interests include the impacts of climate and land-use change; flood and drought analysis; hydrological and hydrodynamic modelling; soil erosion; evapotranspiration; and satellite-based precipitation analysis. Dr. Mondal has published more than 60 research articles in reputed international journals, as well as book chapters. He also serves as a guest editor and reviewer for several high-impact journals.
 
Dr. Bedhas Ujjwal Mandal: Dr. Mandal was awarded the Ph.D. degree in Geography from the University of Calcutta in 2013. His doctoral research focused on fluvial landforms and potential land issues in micro-level, higher Himalayan watersheds. He currently works in physical geography, with a focus on environmental hazards. In particular, his research examines how endogenetic and exogenetic processes affect the diverse Himalayan terrain and the surrounding tectonically sensitive zones, and how these processes influence a range of natural and quasi-natural hazards, using remote sensing and GIS alongside field investigation and validation. His current work concentrates on hazards in the Eastern Himalaya, with special emphasis on glacial lake outburst floods (GLOFs) and flash-flood-related hazards.