Flood Hazards in the Jhelum River Are Mainly Controlled by the Piggyback Thrusting of the Kashmir Basin and Less so by Factors like Climate Change and Urbanization

Abstract

Historical data suggest that flood hazards in the Kashmir basin, located in the Indian portion of the NW Himalaya, are not new, and some of the major flood hazards have turned into disasters in the past, which questions the studies that exclusively relate the flood hazards in the Kashmir basin to factors like urbanization and climate change. The past studies also suggest that one of the grossly overlooked factors is the role of the geological and structural setting of the piggyback Kashmir basin in flood hazards. Therefore, the present work was aimed to review the previous works on the structural setting of the basin with the main focus on the flood river hazards in the Jhelum River. We have used 30-m spatial resolution shuttle radar topography, bedrock geology, drainage pattern, topographic profile, and knick point data to investigate the formation and development of the river. These data are related to the historical and previously published data on floods to understand the dominant factor that controls the flood hazards in the Kashmir basin. The present study suggests that structurally piggyback basin development is the single-most-important cause of drainage development, asymmetrical nature of Jhelum watershed, tilting, and formation of the Jhelum River, which are directly controlling the behavior of flooding and flood hazards in the basin. Although the climate- and urbanization-based arguments are important aspects that do contribute toward the flood hazards, however, the historical and contemporary data on the magnitude and intensity of flood hazards in the Kashmir basin in the combination with our new data suggest that flood hazards have occurred in the past when these factors were not part of the standard scientific discourse on floods.