UNIT – I: Environmental Hazards & Disaster

Meaning of Environmental Hazards, Environmental Disasters and Environmental Stress

Concept of Environmental Hazards, Environmental Disasters and Environmental Stress
Different approaches & relation with human Ecology
Landscape Approach
Ecosystem Approach
Perception approach
Human ecology & its application in geographical researches

UNIT – II: Types of Environmental hazards & Disasters

Natural Hazards and Disasters
Man-induced Hazards and Disasters
Natural Hazards – Planetary Hazards / Disasters – Extra Planetary Hazards / disasters
Planetary Hazards – Endogenous Hazards – Exogenous Hazards

Unit – III: Endogenous Hazards

Volcanic Eruption – Earthquakes – Landslides
Volcanic Hazards / Disasters
Causes and distribution of Volcanoes
Hazardous effects of volcanic eruptions
Environmental impacts of volcanic eruptions
Earthquake Hazards / disasters
Causes of Earthquakes
Distribution of earthquakes
Hazardous effects of earthquakes
Earthquake Hazards in India
Human adjustment, perception & mitigation of earthquake

Unit – IV: Exogenous Hazards

Infrequent events – Cumulative atmospheric hazards / disasters
Infrequent events
Cyclones – Lightning – Hailstorms

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 Cyclones:
Tropical cyclones & Local storms
Causes
Distribution
Human adjustment, perception & mitigation
Destruction by tropical cyclones & local storms
Cumulative atmospheric hazards / disasters
Floods– Droughts – Cold waves – Heat waves
Floods:
Causes of floods
Flood hazards India
Flood control measures
Human adjustment, perception & mitigation
Droughts:
Impacts of droughts
Drought hazards in India
Drought control measures
Extra Planetary Hazards / Disasters – Man induced Hazards / Disasters – Physical hazards / Disasters
– Soil Erosion
Soil Erosion:
Mechanics & forms of Soil Erosion
Factors & causes of Soil Erosion
Conservation measures of Soil Erosion,
Chemical hazards / disasters:
Release of toxic chemicals nuclear explosion, Sedimentation processes
Sedimentation processes:
Global Sedimentation problems
Regional Sedimentation problems
Sedimentation & Environmental problems
Corrective measures of Erosion & Sedimentation
Biological hazards / disasters: Population Explosion

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 UNIT – I: Environmental Hazards & Disaster

 Meaning of Environmental Hazards, Environmental Disasters and Environmental Stress

'Environmental Hazard' is the state of biological, chemical, mechanical or physical events

which has the potential to threaten the surrounding natural environment and adversely affect
people's health.

‘Environmental Disaster’ is a disaster or negative effect to the natural environment due to

human activity, which distinguishes it from the concept of a natural disaster.

The environment often causes damage to mental and physical health. This contributes for a
living being to undergo stress, known as ‘Environmental Stress.’

 Concept of Environmental Hazards, Environmental Disasters and Environmental Stress:

The concept of Environmental Hazard:

'Environmental Hazard' is the state of biological, chemical, mechanical or physical

events which has the potential to threaten the surrounding natural environment and
adversely affect people's health.

India is ranked as the 7th most Hazardous country in the world on a survey taken in 179/206
countries. Brazil, USA, China ranks top 3 and Singapore is the best country.India got overall seventh
rank primarily for high water pollution, destruction of wildlife habitats and rising carbon dioxide
emissions.

The overuse of fertilizers because of high subsidy of urea has earned India 2ndplace for
environment impact due to fertilizer use. Quoting Wall Street Journal, the study said: “In an effort to
boost food production, win farmer votes and encourage domestic fertilizer industry, the government
has increased its subsidy of urea fertilizer over the years and now pays about half of the domestic
industry’s cost of production.”

India, a country of over 1.2 billion people is ranked 3rd for water pollution with increasing
competition among various sectors, including agriculture, industry and domestic water supply, for
its limited water resources. “The competition is leading to this precious resource to dry-up,” the study

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said.As per Central Pollution Control Board’s data over 31 % of water resources are highly
contaminated and large areas in major rivers such as Ganga and Yamuna are polluted.

Water pollution in India is also a cause for destruction of habitats of wildlife that live on
waterways, the study said. India is ranked 8thfor threat to its endangered species and marine
environment. Its rising carbon dioxide emissions, which cause global warming, were also sighted as
alarming for protecting environment. India is now world’s 3rdbiggest carbon dioxide emitter.

The Concept of Environmental Disaster:

Environmental disasters can be outcome of negative effects to agriculture, biodiversity,

human health, industries, mining (oil/coal/iron), nuclear radiation etc., which individually/together
pollutes air, land and water; depleting natural resources. Some examples that took place in the
history all over the world in different areas are as below:

Agricultural:

The Great sparrow campaign: is actually a negative effect of political influence. China
wanted to get developed at a faster pace. So they came up with a movement/campaign “Great Leap
Forward (1958-61)”. Part of this campaign is Four Pests Campaign. In which rats, flies, mosquitoes,
and sparrows were eliminated from Chinese farms, which caused locusts (grass hoppers) to swarm
the farms and contributed to a famine which killed 38 million people. This caused severe ecological
imbalance.

Salinity in Australia: salty soils, salts from ocean, evaporation of salts and again rainfall of
salts on different soils, rise of water tables in rainy seasons, causing environmental hazard.

Dirty Dairying in New Zealand: damage to ecological health of New Zealand’s fresh water
environment

India is a country which depends on agriculture. Agricultural activity is adversely affected by

any unforeseen weather changes or variations in physical conditions. Cyclones, floods, droughts
results in disruption of people’s livelihood and adding to the risk damage and stress of a disaster.
Drought is a perennial feature in India with around 16% of India’s total area is drought prone and
approximately 50 million are affected by droughts. Not so severe like it used to be in the past. Death
rates have reduced. But droughts which resulted into famines killed millions in India.

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Biodiversity:is the degree of variation of life forms within a given species, ecosystem [an
ecosystem is a community of living organisms (plants, animals and microbes) in conjunction with
the nonliving components of their environment (things like air, water and mineral soil)], interacting
as a system.

Rabbits in Australia: Thomas Austin (an English settler in Australia) asked his nephew to
send her 12 grey rabbits, 5 Hares and 72 Partridges for hunting, in 1859. By 10 years, this number
has grown so heavy that, every year, people use to kill over 10 million rabbits. This is also an
environmental disaster, causing imbalance to ecosystem.

2006 Zakouma elephant slaughter: around 800 elephants killed in a year in Chad – Africa.

Shark Finning: Global Shark catch in 2012 is 100 million. Shark’s Fin is the costliest sea food.
Also used for medical purposes, fins trade in USA is about $ 540 Million to $ 1.2 billion (INR 6500
crore).

Chestnut Blight: 1900 a fungus affected American tree. In 40 years, 4 billion trees have died
with this disease. Almost the species of tree American Chestnut is removed from America.

Human Health:

Plague of Justinian: in Europe spread from Africa in 7th century. Death up to 60 million
(60%) of population, daily over 10,000 was recorded.

Black Death: 14th century in Europe. 150 to 200 million people died,bringing down world
population from 450 million to less than 300 million, in a span of 4 years.

Bombay plague epidemic (during 1896 – 1901): Caused death of around 1900/week
throughout the year. Statistics of 22/1000 (plague), 12/1000 (TB), 14/1000 (Cholera), 22/1000
(various other illness) were recorded. Population has got down from 8,20,000 to 7,80,000 in 5 years.

Sixth Cholera Pandemic (1899 – 1923): Killed over 8 lakh. Outbreak of Cholera began in
India and spread over Middle East, North Africa, Eastern Europe and Russia.

Jan to May 1974 Small Pox in India: killed over 65,000 people in the states of Orissa, Bihar
and West Bengal. Several thousand survived but they are disfigured or blinded. India has over 86%
of World’s Smallpox cases.

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 1994 Plague in Surat-India: Killed 52, attacked around 700. It caused severe panic among
people, leading to the biggest migration in India after Independence. 3 lakh people migrated from
Surat in 2 days.

2009 FluPandemic (prevalent over the entire area of a country): Swine Flu. Lab confirmed
cases around 50,000 killing 2,000 and still it’s going on here and there. Classified reports say it’s a
virus spread by China, as a part of tests on biological warfare.

Industrial:

Bhopal Disaster (Bhopal Gas Tragedy - Night of December 2-3, 1984) at Union Carbide
India Limited (UCIL) pesticide plant in Bhopal, Madhya Pradesh. Over 5 lakh people exposed to
Methyl Isocyanate and other chemical. Deaths over 3800, >16,000 claimed in next few weeks of
incident (immediate death toll was 2,259) some estimates 8,000 died in 2 weeks.

A government affidavit in 2006 stated the leak caused 558,125 injuries including 38,478 temporary
partial injuries and approximately 3,900 severely and permanently disabling injuries.

Due to heavy pressures inside the containers, and reactions with corrosive pipes which are not in
good condition and chain reaction between chemicals and materials caused 30 metric tonnes of
Methyl Isocyanate exposed in less than an hour into the atmosphere.

Nuclear:

Chernobyl disaster in 1986 in Chernobyl, Ukraine, "killed at least 4056 people and
damaged almost $7 billion of property". Radioactive fallout from the accident concentrated near
Belarus, Ukraine and Russia and at least 3,50,000 people were forcibly resettled away from these
areas. After the accident, "traces of radioactive deposits unique to Chernobyl were found in nearly
every country in the northern hemisphere"

Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster: Following an earthquake, tsunami, and failure of

cooling systems at Fukushima I Nuclear Power Plant and issues concerning other nuclear facilities in
Japan on March 11, 2011, a nuclear emergency was declared. This was the first time a nuclear
emergency had been declared in Japan, and 140,000 residents within 20 km of the plant were
evacuated.Explosions and a fire have resulted in dangerous levels of radiation, sparking a stock
market collapse and panic-buying in supermarkets.

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 Mayak nuclear waste storage tank explosion, (Chelyabinsk, Soviet Union, 29 September
1957), 200+ people died and 270,000 people were exposed to dangerous radiation levels. Over thirty
small communities had been removed from Soviet maps between 1958 and 1991

Soviet submarine K-431 accident, August 10, 1985 (10 people died and 49 suffered
radiation injuries).

Soviet submarine K-19 accident, July 4, 1961 (8 deaths and more than 30 people were over-
exposed to radiation).

Atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki Within the first two to four months of the
bombings, the acute effects killed 90,000–166,000 people in Hiroshima and 60,000–80,000 in
Nagasaki, with roughly half of the deaths in each city occurring on the first day.

 Different approaches & relation with Human Ecology

Ecology is the branch of biology that deals with the relations of organisms to one another
and to their physical surroundings. The study of the interaction of people with their
environment is Human Ecology.

The increasing worldwide trend in disasters, which will be aggravated by global

environmental change (including climate change), urges us to implement new approaches tohazard
mitigation, as well as exposure and vulnerability reduction. We are, however, facedwith hard choices
about hazard mitigation: should we continue to build dikes and wallsto protect ourselves against
floods and coastal hazards – though we have seen the limitsof these – or should we consider
alternative, ecosystem-based solutions? Ecosystemmanagement is a well-tested solution to
sustainable development that is being revisitedbecause of its inherent “win–win” and “no-regrets”
appeal to address rising disaster andclimate change issues. It is one of the few approaches that can
impact all elements of thedisaster risk equation – mitigating hazards, reducing exposure, reducing
vulnerabilitiesand increasing the resilience of exposed communities. Yet, the uptake of ecosystem-
basedapproaches for disaster risk reduction (DRR) is slow despite some very good examples
ofsuccess stories. Reasons for this are multiple: ecosystem management is rarely consideredas part
of the portfolio of DRR solutions because the environmental and disastermanagement communities
typically work independently from each other; its contributionto DRR is highly undervalued
compared to engineered solutions and thus not attributedappropriate budget allocations; finally,
there are poor science–policy interactions onecosystem-based DRR, which have led to unclear and
sometimes contradictory scientificinformation on the role of ecosystems in DRR.

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 Human ecology:is an interdisciplinary study of the relationship between humans and their
natural, social, and built environments. The philosophy and study of human ecology has a diffuse
history with advancements in geography, sociology(the study of the development, structure and
functioning of human society), psychology (the mental characteristics or attitude of a person or
group), anthropology (comparative study of human societies and cultures and their
development), zoology(the scientific study of the behavior, structure, physiology, classification, and
distribution of animals), epidemiology (the branch of medicine that deals with the incidence,
distribution, and control of diseases), public health, home economics, and natural ecology, among
others.

The term “Human Ecology was published in 1907 in Ellen Swallow Richards work “Sanitation
in Daily Life”, defined there as "the study of the surroundings of human beings in the effects they
produce on the lives of men." Richard's use of the term recognized humans as part of rather than
separate from nature.

The term made its first formal appearance in the field of sociology in the 1921 book
"Introduction to the Science of Sociology", published by Robert E. Park and Ernest W. Burgess (also
from the sociology department at the University of Chicago). Their student, Roderick D.
McKenzie helped solidify human ecology as a sub-discipline within the Chicago school. These authors
emphasized the difference between human ecology and ecology in general by highlighting cultural
evolution in human societies

Landscape Approach:As higher temperatures and erratic rainfall affect the lives of rural
dwellers, this approach helps humans to develop and use their land and water resources more
efficiently to earn a livelihood, produce food, maintain livestock and take care of other needs. It
should be done in a manner that it causes minimum damage to the environment while helping to
restore and maintain biodiversity.

Landscape approach deals with large-scale processes in an integrated and multidisciplinary

manner, combining natural resources management with environmental and livelihood
considerations. The landscape approach helps to identify and develop positive externalities
(including ecosystem services) and reduce negative impacts, especially from individual land users.

The landscape approach is a bit more than integrated development. The use of remote
sensing, resource monitoring, and spatial analysis are part of landscape science and provide the tools

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to communities to assess the impact of their actions on a rural landscape. The expansion of mobile
phone technology could help make such information available to communities at their fingertips.

Ecosystem Approach: The ecosystem approach is a strategy for the integrated management
of land, water and living resources that promotes conservation and sustainable use in an equitable
way. Application of the ecosystem approach will help to reach a balance of the three objectives of the
Convention. It is based on the application of appropriate scientific methodologies focused on levels
of biological organization which encompass the essential processes, functions and interactions
among organisms and their environment. It recognizes that humans, with their cultural diversity, are
an integral component of ecosystems.

The Ecosystem Approach can help to manage resource use more effectively and contribute to
reducing the risk and impact of disasters. It is a strategy for the integrated management of land, water
and living resources that promotes conservation and sustainable use in an equitable way. The
Ecosystem Approach puts people and their natural resource use practices squarely at the centre of
decision making. Because of this, the Ecosystem Approach can be used to seek an appropriate balance
between the conservation and use of biological diversity in areas where there are both multiple
resource users and important natural values. It is therefore of relevance to professionals and
practitioners active in farming, forestry, fisheries, protected areas, urban planning and many other
fields.

Human Perception/Perception Approach:Human perception towards an environmental

hazard requires proper understanding of several factors. This includes estimating the

‘Certainty’ of the event that has an impact on natural environment,

‘Adaptability’ to natural environments and maintaining their health and productivity in response to
the current level of each event,

‘Avoidability’ of the event, in terms of how easy or difficult it would be to avoid the occurrence of the
event,

‘Relevance of your life’ to the event, in terms of its impacts on natural environments,

‘Controllability’ of each event, in terms of people’s ability to control its impact on natural
environments,

‘Duration of impacts’ that each event has on natural environments,

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‘Societal benefits’ of each event benefiting the functioning of society,

‘Personal benefits’ of each event benefitting the persons individually,

‘Scope of impacts’ in terms of the size of the area affected,

‘Number of people’ that could be affected by the impact the event may have on natural environments,

‘Species loss’ in terms of any potential for loss of animal or plant species,

‘Destructiveness’ in terms of its impacts on affected natural environments,

‘Reversibility of impacts’, the extent to which the impacts on natural environments associated with
the event are reversible (i.e., the ability of natural environments to return to pre-event conditions)

‘Human suffering’, that could result from the event as a result of its impact on natural environments

‘Animal/plant suffering’that could occur as a result of theevent

‘Understandability’of theimpacts each event has on natural environments

‘Predictability’ of impacts on natural environments associated with the event

‘Human health risk’ at the rate, the extent to which the event and its impact on natural environments
pose a risk to human health

‘General acceptability of event’ in terms of its general impact on human life and natural environments

Human perception to Environmental hazards requires their agreement to the following statements
on ascale that ranged from 1 (strongly disagree) to 7 (strongly agree).

1. It is more important for human life to progress than it is to protect animal or plant life.

2. The resources of the earth exist for the use of mankind.

3. Environmental protection must not stand in the way of providing economic opportunity for
everyone.

4. The earth will always be able to provide the resources necessary for the human race to survive.

5. The behaviour of humans needs to become more sensitive to the environment if the human race is
to survive.

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6. The extinction of animal and plant species is acceptable as long as alternative resources exist.

It is all perception of a being how to coexist with nature comes when they suffer to any of the
environmental hazards. Thus, one should go through the above mentioned factors and agreements.

 Human ecology and its application in geographical research

Geography and Human Ecology both deal with human-environment interactions.

Geography is about Earth's diversity, its resources, and humankind's survival on the planet.
Geographers analyze the associations of things and events that give special character to particular
places; the interconnections between different areas; and the working of complex systems through
time. Geography is the only academic discipline in which an integrative perspective focusing on
spatial relationships and processes is a fundamental concern.

Human Ecology focuses on the health and well-being of the environment using an ecosystems
approach. The individual units apply ecological principles to the study of the ecosystems that supply
us with biospheric services and renewable resources, as well as the essentially non-renewable
resources that we have come to depend upon. The human use of biospheric systems is examined in
the certain knowledge that the long term health and well being of people depends upon the continued
healthy functioning of pre-human ecosystems.

Both Geography and Human Ecology take an integrative approach to environmental problems and
their solution, including the study of economic and social goals and processes that determine
strategies of resource use and ecosystem management.

UNIT – II: Types of Environmental hazards & Disasters

 Natural Hazards and Disasters – Introduction:

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Born and brought up in any part of the world, we come across disasters (experiencing it personally
/ hear through different sources). Whatever it is, either it be a natural/man-made, one should be
aware and prepared for the consequences of a disaster. India is also a disaster prone country and one
should work towards the management and mitigation of these disasters.
The terms hazard and disaster are related to many disciplines and professional communities;
there are several definitions to these terms. Sometimes, both are used as synonyms but they are not.
The term natural hazard implies the occurrence of a natural condition or phenomenon, which
threatens or acts hazardously in a defined space and time. Different conceptualizations of natural
hazards have not only evolved in time, they also reflect the approach of the different disciplines
involved in their study.
Defining Hazard:In this sense, a natural hazard has been expressed as “the elements of
physical environment that are harmful to humans and caused by forces extraneous (external) to them.
i.e., these events originated in the physical environment and are not caused by humans, but have
consequences harmful to people (Burton &Kates, 1964).” The above statement is correct as hazards
harmful to people. However, it fails to recognize people’s role in causing or amplifying the impacts
associated with hazards. Eg: floods can originate either from a natural variability in meteorological
conditions, or from human actions, such as deforestation, or failure of a dam constructed to control
flooding. Similarly landslides caused naturally by rainfall, earthquakes or volcanoes and caused by
human activities like logging, roads & buildings constructions.
(Tobil and Montz, 1997) defined hazard as “the event that represents the potential occurrence
of extreme natural events, or likelihood to cause the severe adverse effects, while disasters result from
actual hazard events.”i.e., only after an event, a disaster occurs. It means that hazard is just a threat
and not the actual disaster. And there is no guarantee of disaster after hazard.
(Alexander, 2000) defined hazard as” an extreme geophysical event, that is capable of causing
a disaster.” Every disaster starts with a hazard. “
(United Nations international Society for Disaster Reduction (UNISDR), 2004) defined hazard
as “a potentially damaging physical event, phenomenon or human activity that may cause the loss of life
or injury, property damage, social and economic disruption or environmental degradation.”
No doubt, humans affect the natural processes of environment, contributing to hazards, which go out
of control leading to disasters. However, this doesn’t mean people are passive in facing hazards. They
defend and implement measures to mitigate the impacts of hazards.
Any hazardous event/action can define/cause a disaster. Sometimes hazard can also be
spoken in context of vulnerability, which is complex outcome of many factors, such as education,

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gender, demography, technology and preparedness. Location can also act as a vulnerability factor.
Sometimes socio-economic conditions are also defined as the causes to hazards. “A combination of
different factors such as socio-economic conditions, geographic locations, political influences, and
demographic characteristics, shapes the differing levels of vulnerability of different groups of people
when an extreme natural event occurs (Wisener - 2004).”
The term hazard is thus often associated with different agents or processes. Some of those
include atmospheric, hydrologic, geologic, biologic and technologic. Specifically, natural hazards are
considered within a geological and hydrometeorological conception, where earthquakes, volcanoes,
floods, landslides, storms, droughts and tsunamis are the main types.
Defining Disaster: Natural hazards are threatening events, capable of producing damage to
the physical and social space where they take place not only at the moment of their occurrence, but
on a long-term basis due to their associated consequences. When these consequences have a major
impact on society and/or infrastructure, they become natural disasters. The term disaster is
multifunctioned, and many divergent definitions of the term appear in hazards literature.
Fundamentally disasters are actual threats to humans and their welfare. Disasters are
generally conceived as adverse events, the negative impacts of which can’t be overcome without
outside assistance, or support from many outside sources, including State & National governments,
and even governments from other countries.
One of the earliest definitions of disaster is provided by Charles Fritz, he defined a disaster as
“an event, concentrated in time & space, in which a society, or a relatively self sufficient subdivision of a
society, undergoes severe danger and incurs such losses to its members and physical appurtenances that
the social structure is disrupted and the fulfillment of all or some of the essential functions of the society
is provided (Charles Fritz, 1961).
According to Degg (1992), “natural disasters result from spatial interaction between a
hazardous environmental process (i.e., an extremely physical phenomenon such as earthquakes) and a
population i.e., sensitive to that process and likely to experience human and/or economic loss from it.”
Disasters disrupt normal life, affects livelihood systems, and halt individual and/or community
functions at least temporarily. They often erase decades of development in a matter of minutes and
push an affected community and/or nation years back in its quest for development.
(Quarantelli, 1985), on the other hand, provides a definition of disaster in the context of
demand and capabilities of a community to handle an extreme event. He defines a disaster as a crisis
occasion where demand exceeds capabilities, and he offers the following continuum of labels for
disasters of varying magnitude relative to community resources (Quarantelli, 2006).

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 Crisis: Capacity exceeds demand – with capacity to spare
Emergency: Capacity meets or somewhat exceeds demands
Disaster: Demand exceeds capacity
Catastrophe: Demands overwhelmed and may destroy capacity

Similar to Quarantelli (1985), Gad-el-Hak (2010) recently classified disasters into 5 groups. His
classification is based on one of the two criteria: either number of person deaths/injuries/displaced/
affected or the size of the affected area of the event. He classifies disaster types as Scope I–V according
to the scale illustrated in Table 1.2.

General spectrum of environmental hazards from geophysical to human activities

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 A disaster is a natural or man-made (or technological) hazard resulting in an event of
substantial extent causing significant physical damage or destruction, loss of life, or drastic change
to the environment. A disaster can be defined as any tragic event halting from events such as
earthquakes, floods, catastrophic accidents, fires, or explosions. It is a phenomenon that can cause
damage to life and property and destroy the economic, social and cultural life of people.

In current academia, disasters are seen as the consequence of inappropriately managed risk. These
risks are the product of a combination of both hazard/s and vulnerability. Hazards that strike in areas
with low vulnerability will never become disasters, as is the case in uninhabited regions.

Developing countries suffer the greatest costs when a disaster hits – more than 95 percent of all
deaths caused by disasters occur in developing countries, and losses due to natural disasters are 20
times greater (as a percentage of GDP) in developing countries than in industrialized countries.

 Natural hazards – Classification:

Researchers have been studying disasters for more than a century, and for more than forty
years disaster research. The studies reflect a common opinion when they argue that all disasters can
be seen as being human-made, their reasoning being that human actions before the strike of the

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hazard can prevent it developing into a disaster. All disasters are hence the result of human failure
to introduce appropriate disaster management measures. Hazards are routinely divided into natural
or human-made. Natural Hazards/disasters can further be classified into Planetary
hazards/disasters and Extra Planetary hazards/disasters. A specific hazard/disaster may sometimes
cause a secondary hazard/disaster that increases the impact. A classic example is an earthquake that
causes a tsunami, land slide or tsunami resulting in coastal flooding.

Major Natural Hazards

Planetary hazards (endogenous hazards, exogenous hazards)

Planetary hazards are further classified into endogenous hazards (Having an internal cause
or origin/Growing or originating from within an organism) and exogenous hazards (Of, relating to,
or developing from external factors/Growing or originating from outside an organism).A distinction
is often made between hazards that are exogenous and endogenous to a society. This refers to the
extent of their social origins and is relevant to that society’s scope for action to minimize the hazard.
Hazards exogenous to one society can be endogenous to another. Many hazards such as industrial air
or water pollution or floods cross international borders – for example the Mozambique floods of 2000
were intensified by the opening of upstream dams in neighboring countries. Exogenous/endogenous
are considered as natural hazards and they are the product of the joint evolution of coupled human

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and physical systems. The disasters that result from them always have an endogenous element
because they also reflect levels of vulnerability.
Examples of endogenous hazards: Volcanoes, earthquakes, landslides, tsunamis
Examples of exogenous hazards: Cyclones, lightning, hail storms, tornadoes, floods, droughts,
cold waves, heat waves.
Intensity and impact of a disaster reduces from natural to man-made disasters, ranging the
damage from large scale to small scale, depending upon the vulnerability of humans to it. The unique
geo-climatic conditions of the Indian subcontinent make this region among the most vulnerable to
natural disasters in the world.

Natural hazards often vary regionally, even seasonally, and they also frequently trigger
secondary hazards. For example, landslides, tsunamis, and fire may follow earthquakes.
Thunderstorms may be accompanied by heavy rains that can cause mudflows, flash floods, and
conventional flooding. The volcanic eruption of Mt. St. Helens in 1980 led to an earthquake,
landslides, floods, and wildfires. Table 1.3 lists selected secondary hazards and their causing extreme
natural events. Note that depending on time of initiation, a hazard can be a primary or a secondary
hazard. Closely related to secondary hazards are compound disasters, which can occur either
sequentially or simultaneously with one or more disasters. Compound disasters have a tendency to
exacerbate consequences and increase victims’ sufferings. However, natural hazards also arise from
rather common natural events, such as hail, coastal erosion, and heat waves – all of which can cause
considerable damage to the natural environment and society. As indicated, the focus of this text is on
natural hazards and disasters.

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  Man-induced Hazards:
As indicated, while hazards have traditionally been represented as the workof natural forces,
recent research indicates that society plays an important partin determining which natural events
become disastrous. Thus, natural disasters are widely considered the outcome of an interaction
between the natural events system (geophysical processes) and the human use system (socio-
economic, cultural, and physical conditions). This, as mentioned previously, means that not all
natural disasters are exclusively natural (Tobin and Montz, 1997). For this reason, many hazards
researchers prefer using the term “environmental” disaster rather than “natural” disaster (Oliver,
2001). Others stress that while hazards are natural, disasters are not. Natural events may become
disasters if they occur in vulnerable human environments (Wisner et al., 2004). Mauro (2004)
considers disasters as the interface between hazard and the vulnerable conditions at community,
household, and individual levels. After all, humans are the reason for creating vulnerable conditions
to hazards, turning them to hazards. Thus every vulnerable condition he creates becomes a man-
induced hazard/disaster. This is illustrated in the following figure

 India Disaster Context Analysis

The Indian subcontinent is highly vulnerable to droughts, floods, cyclones and earthquakes,
though landslides, avalanches and bush fires too frequently occur in the Himalayan region of
northern India. Among the 36 total States/Union Territories in the country, 22 are disaster prone.
India is the seventh largest country in the world by geographical area with an extent of 32,62,263
sq.km and is the second largest populated country in the world. India stands unique in its rich cultural

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heritage, diversified geographical and climatic conditions, with the snow covered mountains
(Himalayas) in the northern side and rain forests in the south, the Indo-Gangetic Plains,the Deccan
Plateau, the major life-giving Rivers which make the areas fertile, deserts on the western
side, drought prone areas and long stretches of coastal areas.

India, due to its physio- geographic conditions, land characteristics and climatic conditions, is one of
the most disaster prone countries in the world, exposed to different kinds of natural hazards. India
has witnessed a number of disasters which claimed several thousands of human lives, rendering
millions of people homeless and causing immense loss to properties of the people.

Natural Disasters from 1980 – 2010 - An Overview

Over View

No of events 431
No of people killed: 143,039

Average killed per year: 4,614

No of people affected: 1,521,726,127

Average affected per year: 49,087,940

Economic Damage (US$ X 1,000): 48,063,830

Economic Damage per year (US$ X 1,000): 1,550,446

 Susceptibility of India to Natural Hazards:

India is a country which faces 4 major Natural hazards (exogenous & endogenous) turned
disasters. They are droughts, cyclones, floods (exogenous hazards) and earthquakes (endogenous
hazards). Also there are several other secondary effects of these primary hazards like landslides,
tsunamis, cold waves, heat waves etc.,

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 Natural hazards - India

Endogenous Hazards in India

Earthquakes: Earthquakes are considered to be one of the most dangerous and destructive
natural hazards. The impact of this phenomenon is sudden with little or no warning, making it just
impossible to predict it or make preparations against damages and collapse of buildings and other
human-made structures. About 50-60% of total area of the country is vulnerable to seismic activity

Page 20
of varying intensities. Most of the vulnerable areas are generally located in Himalayan and sub-
Himalayan regions, and in Andaman and Nicobar Islands.

Landslides: Landslides are yet another recurrent phenomenon in the hilly regions of India
such as Himalayas, North-East India and Eastern and Western Ghat regions. The major Landslide
disaster that took place was at MalpaUttarkhand (UP) in the year 1998 when nearly 380 people were
killed when massive landslides washed away the entire village. The 2010 Leh cloudburst led to flash
mudslides and flash floods that killed 196 people swept away a number of houses and public
buildings.

Exogenous Hazards in India:

Cyclones: India has a very long coastline of 7,517 km, which is exposed to tropical cyclones
arising in the Bay of Bengal and Arabian Sea. The Indian Ocean is one of the six major cyclone-prone
regions of the world. In India, cyclones occur usually between April and May, and also between
October and December. The eastern coastline is more prone to cyclones as it is hit by about 80% of
total cyclones generated in the region.

Floods: Among all the disasters that occur in the country, river floods are most frequent and
often the most devastating. The cause for floods is chiefly the peculiarities of rainfall in the country.
Out of the total annual rainfall in the country, 75% is concentrated over a short monsoon season of
3-4 months. As a result there is a very heavy discharge from the rivers during this period causing
widespread floods. As much as 40 million hectares of land in the country has been identified as flood
prone. An average of 18.6 million hectares of land is flooded annually. Floods are caused mainly in
Ganga-Brahmaputra-Meghna basin which carries 60% of nation’s total river flow.

Cold waves: Cold waves are common and recurrent disaster in North India. During the
winter season due to extreme cold climates, hundreds of people die of cold bites and related diseases
every year. The impact is more on the urban poor.

Hazards caused by land-use

Droughts: Drought is a perennial feature in some states of India. 16% of the country’s total
area is drought prone and approximately 50 million people are annually affected by droughts. In fact,
drought is a significant environmental problem too as it is caused by a less than average rainfall over
a long period of time. In India, about 68% of the total sown area of the country is drought prone. Most

Page 21
of the drought-prone areas identified by the govt. lie in the arid, semi-arid and sub-humid areas of
the country.

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 Unit – 3: Endogenous Hazards

 Volcanic Hazards/Disasters

Volcanoes are openings in the earth's crust created when molten material under the crust is
propelled upward though the surface. The magma chamber collects the magma that is expelled to the
surface in an eruption. A volcanic event could be:

 Destructive, with voluminous lava flows or explosive activity. This usually occurs when
magma is sticky and contains a lot of gas. Hot debris particles called pyroclastic are expelled
during violent explosions. Heavier pieces land near the crater and lighter pieces can be
carried by the wind for hundreds of miles.
 Non-destructive, with little release of solids or magmatic liquid. These eruptions occur when
the magma is more fluid and contains less gas. The solids or magma rocks and lava cools on
its slope.

Cross Section of a Volcano: The material expelled during violent and quite eruptions build a cone
shaped mountain around the central vent. Usually there is a bulge shaped crater at the top of the
central vent.

Types of volcanic eruption

Volcanoes can be divided according to the explosiveness of their eruptions. The least severe are
known as Hawaiian eruptions – these generally produce shield volcanoes. The most severe are called
Plinian eruptions – these often involve the collapse of the volcano’s cone and the formation of a
caldera. Plinian eruptions were named after the Roman Scholar Pliny the Elder, who lost his life, when
Mount Vesuvius erupted in AD 79. His nephew, Pliny the younger wrote to Tacitus describing the
eruption as it began.

Hawaiian: The least violent type of eruption. Large amounts of runny lava erupt and produce large
volcanoes with gentle slopes

Strombolian: Mild but fairly regular eruptions. Small sticky lava bombs, ash, gas and glowing cinders
erupt

Vulcanian: Violent eruptions shoot out very thick lava and large lava bombs.

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Peleean: A violent type of eruption. Thick, sticky lava is accompanied by a burning cloud of ash, gas
and pumice (a nueeardente, which is French for ‘fiery cloud’).

Plinian: The most violent type of eruption. Cinders, gas and ash are flung explosively high into the
air. The volcano cone often collapses to form a caldera.

 Causes and distribution of Volcanoes:

Volcanoes are generally found where tectonic plates are diverging or converging. A mid-oceanic
ridge, for example the Mid-Atlantic Ridge, has examples of volcanoes caused by divergent tectonic
plates pulling apart; the Pacific Ring of Fire has examples of volcanoes caused by convergent tectonic
plates coming together. By contrast, volcanoes are usually not created where two tectonic plates slide
past one another. Volcanoes can also form where there is stretching and thinning of the Earth's
crust in the interiors of plates, e.g., in the East African Rift, the Wells Gray-Clearwater volcanic
field and the Rio Grande Rift in North America. This type of volcanism falls under the umbrella of
"Plate hypothesis" volcanism. Volcanism away from plate boundaries has also been explained
as mantle plumes. These so-called "hotspots", for example Hawaii, are postulated to arise from
upwelling diapirs with magma from the core–mantle boundary, 3,000 km deep in the Earth.

 Environmental Impacts of Volcanic eruptions:

Volcanic eruptions can be extremely damaging to the environment, particularly because of a number
of toxic gases possibly present in pyroclastic material. It typically consists mainly of water vapor, but
it also contains carbon dioxide and sulphur dioxide gas. Other gases typically found in volcanic ashes
are hydrogen sulphide, hydrogen chloride, hydrogen fluoride, carbon monoxide, and volatile metal
chlorides.

Carbon dioxide emitted from volcanoes adds to the natural greenhouse effect. Sulphur-dioxides
cause environmental problems, because they are converted to sulphuric acid in the stratosphere; the
main cause of acid rain. Furthermore, sulphate aerosols are formed, which reflect solar radiation and
absorb heat, thereby cooling the earth. Sulphate aerosols also take part in chemical reactions, forming
ozone destructive material.

 Social and Economical Impact of Volcanoes:

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 Erupting volcanoes can pose many hazards, not only in the immediate vicinity of the eruption.
Volcanic ash can be a threat to aircraft, in particular those with jet engines where ash particles can
be melted by the high operating temperature; the melted particles then adhere tothe turbine blades
and alter their shape, disrupting the operation of the turbine.

The social and economical impact that volcanoes posses are indeed a serious one. Throughout
history volcanoes have shed their destruction on humankind, and their legacy will continue. One of
the most destructive eruptions arePelean eruptions which are named after the eruption of Mt. Pelee
on May 8, 1902 that destroyed the town of St. Pierre

Of 30,000 inhabitants in 1902, only two survived the avalanches of incandescent ash that
leveled the city in only two minutes. Victims recounted a burning sensation on all over their bodies
and throat. Instantaneous death is usually the result of inhaling the highly heated gases or from
burns. All the houses were unroofed or demolished. The trees were stripped of leaves and branches,
down to the bare trunks

The eruption of Vesuvius on August, AD 79 was even yet more terrifing. It produced major
pumice-and-ash falls, followed by pyroclastic flows(nuees). Pompeii, a nearby city, was blanketed by
thick pumice-fall deposits, which were in turn covered by pyroclastic flows, 4 to 5 meters thick.
Herculaneum, another nearby city, was upwind from the early falling debris but was inundated by
multiple pyroclastic flows, which total 10 to 20 meters in thickness.

Among the causes of death are fractured skulls, overwhelmed by ashes or noxious gases, or
overcome by pyroclastic-flows. Excavation revealed 2,000 body-shaped cavities in Pompeii alone.

 Mitigation by evacuation:

The instruments that monitor the rift zones 24 hours a day should be placed. Before an eruption,
the ground inflates rapidly and seismographs record volcanic tremor (underground magma flowing
up towards the surface). Although there is usually an increase in seismic activity and ground
deformation for several hours prior to an eruptive outbreak, residents living in remote areas may
have little warning and less time to evacuate themselves and their possessions prior to a fast-moving
lava flow.

The steeper the ground, the faster lava travels. When Kalapana was overrun by lava flows in the
early 1990s, residents had days and sometimes weeks to plan for evacuation, because the ground

Page 25
was flat and the lava moved slowly. But on the west side of Mauna Loa, the slopes are steeper, and
lava moves faster. The 1950 lava flow at Hookenamauka reached the ocean in less than six hours.

Besides destroying homes, lava flows can cut off roads--and evacuation routes. Thus, you may be
asked to evacuate early and quickly to provide adequate time to reach safety. You can always replace
your possessions, but not your life, so get your family and pets out of danger as quickly as possible.

Because a sudden eruption may damage transportation and communication networks, you
should make advance plans with your family on where they should go and with whom they should
communicate in the event an eruption occurs when the members of the family are not together.

If you live on a steep slope, you may not be able to see lava flows headed your way, as they may
be obscured by trees or mist. Follow the orders of Civil Defense, who are informed by scientists of
the location of flows.

Keep a list of items to take with you in the event of evacuation: irreplaceable documents, financial
records, medications, easily transported valuables, and sufficient supplies to sustain you for several
days. And remember - the only truly irreplaceable thing is your life and that of your loved ones. When
in doubt, get out.

Also recognize that your pets and farm animals cannot be accommodated at shelters. If you live
in a high lava flow hazard zone it would be wise to make arrangements ahead of time with a friend
or family member living outside of the high risk zone to shelter your animals if evacuation is
necessary.

 Earthquake Hazards / disasters

Earthquake:An earthquake is a phenomenon of shaking on the surface of the earth, due to the
movement along geological faults present in the earth’s lithosphere. Where, movement of plates is
caused by convective currents in the mantle. As the plates tend to move high strain energies are built
up along the fault plane because of friction between the plates and when the friction is overcome, the
sudden release of energy from the fault plane will generate seismic waves to travel in all directions.
The seismic waves that reach the earth’s surface cause an earthquake.
 Causes of Earthquakes
Theory of Continental Drift
Theory of Plate tectonic

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The short answer is that earthquakes are caused by faulting, a sudden lateral or vertical movement
of rock along a rupture (break) surface.
Here's the longer answer: The surface of the Earth is in continuous slow motion. This is plate
tectonics--the motion of immense rigid plates at the surface of the Earth in response to flow of rock
within the Earth. The plates cover the entire surface of the globe. Since they are all moving they rub
against each other in some places (like the San Andreas Fault in California), sink beneath each other
in others (like the Peru-Chile Trench along the western border of South America), or spread apart
from each other (like the Mid-Atlantic Ridge). At such places the motion isn't smooth--the plates are
stuck together at the edges but the rest of each plate is continuing to move, so the rocks along the
edges are distorted (what we call "strain"). As the motion continues, the strain builds up to the point
where the rock cannot withstand any more bending. With a lurch, the rock breaks and the two sides
move (popularly known as Elastic Rebound Theory). An earthquake is the shaking that radiates out
from the breaking rock.
People have known about earthquakes for thousands of years, of course, but they didn't know what
caused them. In particular, people believed that the breaks in the Earth's surface--faults--which
appear after earthquakes, were caused *by* the earthquakes rather than the cause *of* them. It was
Bunjiro Koto, a geologist in Japan studying a 60-mile long fault whose two sides shifted about 15 feet
in the great Japanese earthquake of 1871, who first suggested that earthquakes were caused by faults.
Henry Reid, studying the great San Francisco earthquake of 1906, took the idea further. He said that
an earthquake is the huge amount of energy released when accumulated strain causes a fault to
rupture. He explained that rock twisted further and further out of shape by continuing forces over
the centuries eventually yields in a wrenching snap as the two sides of the fault slip to a new position
to relieve the strain. This is the idea of "elastic rebound" which is now central to all studies of fault
rupture.
 Distribution of earthquakes
Distribution of earthquakes at plate boundaries (inter-plate) and within a region (intra-plate)

 Hazardous effect of earthquakes:

Ground shaking itself is not dangerous. However, the resulting damage to buildings and other
structures and the risk of casualties from falling debris can make it extremely hazardous. The real
dangers to people are being crushed in a collapsing building, drowning in a flood caused by a broken

Page 27
dam or levee, getting buried under a landslide, or being burned in a fire.Some of the earthquake
effects that can be harmful to people are:

The Effect of Ground Shaking:The first main earthquake hazard (danger) is the effect of
ground shaking. Buildings can be damaged by the shaking itself or by the ground beneath them
settling to a different level than it was before the earthquake (subsidence).

Liquefaction: If a saturated soil is subjected to ground vibrations, it tends to compact and

decrease in volume. If drainage is unable to occur, the tendency to decrease in volume results in an
increase in pore water pressure. If the pore water pressure builds up to the point at which it is equal
to the overburden pressure, the effective stress becomes zero, and the soil loses its shear strength
completely and soil flows like a liquid. This phenomenon is called liquefaction.Building and other
structures sink into the ground or overturn and buried tanks and other cavities rise to the surface.
This is known as liquefaction. The ground firms up again after the earthquake has past and the water
has settled back down to its usual place deeper in the ground.

Ground Displacement: The second main earthquake hazard is ground displacement

(ground movement) along a fault. If a structure (a building, road, etc.) is built across a fault, the
ground displacement during an earthquake could seriously damage or rip apart that structure.

Flooding: The third main hazard is flooding. An earthquake can rupture (break) dams or
levees along a river. The water from the river or the reservoir would then flood the area, damaging
buildings and maybe sweeping away or drowning people.

Tsunamis and Seiches (A temporary disturbance or oscillation in the water level of a lake, esp.
one caused by changes in atmospheric pressure.) can also cause a great deal of damage. A tsunami is
what most people call a tidal wave, but it has nothing to do with the tides on the ocean. It is a huge
wave caused by an earthquake under the ocean. Tsunamis can be tens of feet high when they hit the
shore and can do enormous damage to the coastline. Seiches are like small tsunamis. They occur on
lakes that are shaken by the earthquake and are usually only a few feet high, but they can still flood
or knock down houses, and tip over trees.

Fire: The fourth main earthquake hazard is fire. These fires can be started by broken gas
lines and power lines, or tipped over wood or coal stoves. They can be a serious problem, especially
if the water lines that feed the fire hydrants are broken, too. For example, after the Great San

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Francisco Earthquake in 1906, the city burned for three days. Most of the city was destroyed and
250,000 people were left homeless.

Severity of earthquake:The severity of an earthquake is described by both magnitude and

intensity. These two frequently confused terms refer to different, but related, observations.
Magnitude is usually expressed in the size of an earthquake by measuring indirectly the energy
released. By contrast, intensity indicates the local effects and potential for damage produced by an
earthquake on the Earth's surface as it affects humans, animals, structures, and natural objects such
as bodies of water. Intensities usually represent the severity of the shaking resulting from an
earthquake. Ideally, any given earthquake can be described by only one magnitude, but many
intensities since the earthquake effects vary with circumstances such as distance from the epicenter
and local soil conditions.

Page 29
 Average frequency of
Mercalli
Magnitude Description Average earthquake effects occurrence
intensity
(estimated)

Less than Microearthquakes, not felt, or felt rarely by sensitive people. Recorded by Continual/several
Micro I
2.0 seismographs.[16] million per year

Over one million per

2.0–2.9 I to II Felt slightly by some people. No damage to buildings.
year
Minor
Often felt by people, but very rarely causes damage. Shaking of indoor objects can be
3.0–3.9 II to IV Over 100,000 per year
noticeable.

Noticeable shaking of indoor objects and rattling noises. Felt by most people in the
affected area. Slightly felt outside. Generally causes none to minimal damage. 10,000 to 15,000 per
4.0–4.9 Light IV to VI
Moderate to significant damage very unlikely. Some objects may fall off shelves or be year
knocked over.

Can cause damage of varying severity to poorly constructed buildings. At most, none
5.0–5.9 Moderate VI to VIII to slight damage to all other buildings. Felt by everyone. Casualties range from none to 1,000 to 1,500 per year
a few.

Damage to many buildings in populated areas. Earthquake-resistant structures

survive with slight to moderate damage. Poorly-designed structures receive moderate
6.0–6.9 Strong VII to X to severe damage. Felt in wider areas; up to hundreds of miles/kilometers from the 100 to 150 per year
epicenter. Damage can be caused far from the epicenter. Strong to violent shaking in
epicentral area. Death toll ranges from none to 25,000.

Causes damage to most buildings, some to partially or completely collapse or receive

VIII or
7.0–7.9 Major severe damage. Well-designed structures are likely to receive damage. Felt in 10 to 20 per year
greater
enormous areas. Death toll ranges from none to 250,000.

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 Major damage to buildings, structures likely to be destroyed. Will cause moderate to
heavy damage to sturdy or earthquake-resistant buildings. Damaging in large areas,
8.0–8.9 One per year
some totally destroyed. Felt in extremely large regions. Death toll ranges from 1,000 to
Great 1 million.

Near or at total destruction - severe damage or collapse to all buildings. Damage and
9.0 and
shaking extends to distant locations. Permanent changes in ground topography. Death One per 10 to 50 years
greater
toll usually over 1,000.

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  Earthquake Hazards in India

Earthquake hazard zoning of India: The major reason for the high frequency and intensity of the
earthquakes is that the Indian plate is driving into Asia at a rate of approximately 47 mm/year.
Geographical statistics of India show that almost 54% of the land is vulnerable to earthquakes. A
World Bank & United Nations report shows estimates that around 200 million city dwellers in India
will be exposed to storms and earthquakes by 2050. The latest version of seismic zoning map of India
given in the earthquake resistant design code of India [IS 1893 (Part 1) 2002] assigns four levels of
seismicity for India in terms of zone factors. In other words, the earthquake zoning map of India
divides India into 4 seismic zones (Zone 2, 3, 4 and 5) unlike its previous version which consisted of
five or six zones for the country. According to the present zoning map, Zone 5 expects the highest
level of seismicity whereas Zone 2 is associated with the lowest level of seismicity. The latest seismic
zoning map can be accessed from The India Meteorological Department website.

Each zone indicates the effects of an earthquake at a particular place based on the
observations of the affected areas and can also be described using a descriptive scale like Modified
Mercalli intensity scale…

Zone 5:covers the areas with the highest risks zone that suffers earthquakes of intensity IX or
greater. The IS code assigns zone factor of 0.36 for Zone 5. Structural designers use this factor for
earthquake resistant design of structures in Zone 5. It is referred to as the Very High Damage Risk
Zone. The state of Kashmir,the western and central Himalayas, the North-East Indian region and the
Rann of Kutch falls in this zone.Generally, the areas having trap or basaltic rock are prone to
earthquakes.

Zone 4: This zone is called the High Damage Risk Zone and covers areas liable to intensity VIII or
higher. The IS code assigns zone factor of 0.24 for Zone 4. The Indo-Gangetic basin and the capital of
the country (Delhi), Jammu and Kashmir fall in Zone 4. In Maharashtra,Patanarea (Koyananager) also
comes under zone 4.

Zone 3: The Andaman and Nicobar Islands, parts of Kashmir, Western Himalayas fall under this zone.
This zone is classified as Moderate Damage Risk Zone which is liable to intensity VII. The IS code
assigns zone factor of 0.16 for Zone 3.

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Zone 2: This region is liable to intensity VI or less and is classified as the Low Damage Risk Zone. The
IS code assigns zone factor of 0.10 (maximum horizontal acceleration that can be experienced by a
structure in this zone is 10% of gravitational acceleration) for Zone 2.

Seismic Zonation Map of India

Indian-Subcontinent, particularly the north-eastern and north-western regions arethe most

earthquakes-prone regions of the world. 1988 Bihar earthquake, 1991 Uttarkashiearthquake, 1993
Killari earthquake, 1997 Jabalpur earthquake, 1999 Chamoli earthquake,2001 Bhuj earthquake,
2002 Andaman earthquake, 2004 Sumatra earthquake, 2005 Kashmirearthquake, 2011 Sikkim
earthquake are some of the worst hit earthquakes, which cumulativelyhave caused over 1 lakh death
toll.
Seismic zonation map clearly shows that 58% land mass of India is highly vulnerable to
earthquake hazard. During last 100 years, India haswitnessed more than 650 earthquakes
ofmagnitude= 5.0 [Kamalesh Kumar, 2008].In addition to very active northern andnorth-eastern
range, the recent events of1993 Killari (Maharashtra) and Jabalpur(Madhya Pradesh) in the
Peninsular Indiahave started raising doubts as the disasterscaused by these earthquakes
arealarmingly increasing. Earthquake eventsreporting from the Himalayan mountainrange,

Page 33
Andaman and Nicobar Islands, IndoGangeticplain as well as from peninsularregion of India belongs
to subductioncategory and a few events had also beenunder intra-plate category.

Seismic Zonation Map of India along with 1040 active faults (Geological Survey of
India) and National Importance Dams

Himalayan Frontal Arc (HFA) ranging about 2,500 km long extending from Kashmir inthe
west to Assam in the east undergoes subduction process, making it one of the mostseismically active
regions in the world. The present day seismicity in this regionis due to the continuous collision
between Indian and Eurasian plates.Some of the mostimportant earthquakes that have occurred
during the past century in Himalayan Frontal Arc aretabulated below

Table 1.1: Important earthquakes in Himalayan Frontal Arc (Kamalesh Kumar (2008), http://gbpihed.nic.in)

Place Year Magnitude Casualty

Kangra Valley April 4, 1905 8.6 >20,000
Bihar-Nepal border January 1, 1934 8.4 >10,653
Quetta May 30, 1935 7.6 about 30,000
North Bihar 1988 6.5 1000 approximately
Uttarkashi October 20, 1991 6.6 >2,000

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 Chamoli March 29, 1999 6.8 >150
Hindukush November 11, 1999 6.2 no death reported
Sikkim September 18, 2011 6.9 about 111

The Peninsular India which was once considered as a stable region has started toexperience
the earthquakes in increased number because of intra-plate mechanism. Eventhough the magnitudes
of these are less and recurrence intervals are larger than those of theHFA, it started to create panic
among the inhabitants in this region. Some of the most importantearthquakes that have occurred in
Peninsular India in the past are tabulated below

Table 1.2: Important earthquakes in Peninsular India (Kamalesh Kumar (2008), http://gbpihed.nic.in)

Place Year Magnitude Casualty

Kachchh June 16, 1819 8.5 No record
Jabalpur June 2, 1927 6.5 —
Indore March 14, 1938 6.3 —
Bhadrachalam April 14, 1969 6.0 —
Koyna December 10, 1967 6.7 >200
Killari (Latur) September 30, 1993 6.3 >10,000
Jabalpur May 22, 1997 6.0 >55
Bhuj January 26, 2001 7.6 >20,000

North-eastern region of India which is one of the six most seismically active regions of the
world lies at the junction of the Himalayan arc to the north and the Burmese arc to the east. Eighteen
large earthquakes with magnitude ≥ 7.0 occurred in this region during the last hundred years (Kayal,
1998). High seismicity in the north-eastern region may be attributed to the collision tectonics in the
north (Himalayan arc) and subduction tectonics in the east (Burmese arc). Some of the most
important earthquakes that have occurred in this region of India in the past are tabulated below

Table 1.3: Important earthquakes in Northeastern region of India (Kamalesh Kumar (2008), http://gbpihed.nic.in)

Place Year Magnitude Remark

Numerous earth fissures
Cachar March 21, 1869 7.8
and sand craters
Shillong Plateau June 12, 1897 8.7 About 1542 people died

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 Sibsagar August 31, 1906 7.0 Property damage
Myanmar December 12, 1908 7.5 Property damage
4500 sq km area
Srimangal July 8, 1918 7.6
suffered damage
S-W Assam September 9, 1923 7.1 Property damage
Railway lines, culverts
Dhubri July 2, 1930 7.1
and bridges cracked
Assam January 27, 1931 7.6 Destruction of Property
N-E Assam October 23, 1943 7.2 Destruction of Property
Upper Assam July 29, 1949 7.6 Severe damage
About 1520 people died.
One of the largest known
Upper Assam August 15, 1950 8.7
earthquake in the
history
Indo-Myanmar border August 6, 1988 7.5 No casualty reported.
Seismologists seem not to believe that the frequency in the occurrence of earthquakes has
increased. Unfortunately, earthquakes of higher magnitudes which use to occur in uninhabited areas
or virtually uninhabited areas have hit some thickly populated areas. Consequently, they have killed
thousands of people. Increase in the loss of life and property damage is due to increasing vulnerability
of human civilization to these hazards. This can be understood by the fact that Kangra event of 1905
(MW=8.6) and Bihar-Nepal of 1934 (MW=8.4) killed about 20,000 and 10,653 people respectively. On
the other hand 1897 Shillong Plateau and 1950 Upper Assam events of the northeast (MW=8.7 each)
caused death to about 1542 and 1520 people. This is because Kangra and Bihar-Nepal events struck
in densely populated areas of Indo-Gangetic plain. On the other hand, the north-eastern region was
thinly populated in 1897 and 1950 [Kamalesh Kumar, 2008]. The concentration of population has
become denser since the time when such major earthquake occurred in these regions, creating more
alarming situation and the devastation it would become if such event occurs now. There are several
examples, where high number of casualties and deaths occurred when the event occurred during
early morning hours and quite opposite when they occurred during the day time even when the
epicenter is too near to the inhabited areas. These examples clearly tell that the time of occurrence
of the event and the epicenter also matters, to quantify loss of life and damage to property.

Page 36
 Major earthquakes in India

 Mitigation of earthquake:
• National, State & Dist. Disaster Management Authorities should be established.
• Large number of strong ground motion recorders should be installed
• Identification and quantification of where the hazard exists should be made.
• Seismic zonation (macro and micro) should be done.
• Numerical simulations should be done if there is no previous data.
• Review of building bye-laws (codes of practice) should be done, with every advancement in
research
• Considering probable input forces, buildings should be analyzed, designed and constructed
with utmost care.

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 • Implementation gap should be reduced between poor and rich.
• Critical information should reach the emergency response team in time, to prevent further
losses.
• Capacity building of engineers and architects
• Training masons
• Earthquake engineering in undergraduate engineering/architecture curricula
• Hospital preparedness and emergency health management in medical education
• Retrofitting of life-line structures (old/vulnerable)
• Urban earthquake vulnerability reduction programme
• Mainstreaming mitigation in rural areas

 National guidelines on earthquake risk management

National Disaster Management Authority has released a national guidelines in May 2007 in
which it is mentioned that all new constructions in the earthquake prone area must adopt earthquake
resistant measures. The critical factors responsible for the high seismic risk in India haveprioritized
six sets of critical interventions; they are to:
a) Ensure the incorporation of earthquake-resistant design features for the construction of new
structures.
b) Facilitate selective strengthening and seismic retrofitting of existing priority and lifeline structures
in earthquake-prone areas.
c) Improve the compliance regime through appropriate regulation and enforcement.
d) Improve the awareness and preparedness of all stakeholders.
e) Introduce appropriate capacity development interventions for effective earthquake management
(including education training, R&D, and documentation).
f) Strengthen the emergency response capability in earthquake-prone areas.
Mitigating at your capacity:
• Securing bookshelves
• Emergency survival kits
• Securing water heater
• Protecting your home
• Family preparedness
Home Emergency Survival Kit Checklist
Portable radio… why radio?

Page 38
 Light source (Flashlight, Candles & Matches)
First-aid kit, including Medications
Five-day non-perishable food supply
Containers of water (2 quarts per person per day)
Sleeping bags or blankets
Clothing
Cooking stove
Fuel for stoves, hibachis, or lanterns
 Landslides:
A landslide or landslip is a geological phenomenon which includes a wide range of ground
movements, such as rockfalls, deep failure of slopes and shallow debris flows, which can occur in
offshore, coastal and onshore environments. Although the action of gravity is the primary driving
force for a landslide to occur, there are other contributing factors affecting the original slope stability.
Typically, pre-conditional factors build up specific sub-surface conditions that make the area/slope
prone to failure, whereas the actual landslide often requires a trigger before being released.

Causes:

Landslides occur when the stability of the slope changes from a stable to an unstable condition. A
change in the stability of a slope can be caused by a number of factors, acting together or alone.
Natural causes of landslides include:

 ground water (pore water) pressure acting to destabilize the slope

 Loss or absence of vertical vegetative structure, soil nutrients, and soil structure (e.g. after a
wildfire (e.g. fire in forests etc. lasting for 3-4 days)
 erosion of the toe of a slope by rivers or ocean waves
 weakening of a slope through saturation by snow melt, glaciers melting, or heavy rains
 earthquakes adding loads to barely stable slope
 earthquake-caused liquefaction destabilizing slopes
 volcanic erosion
 Landslides are aggravated by human activities,

Human causes include:

 deforestation, cultivation and construction, which destabilize the already fragile slopes
 vibrations from machinery or traffic

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  blasting
 earthwork which alters the shape of a slope, or which imposes new loads on an existing slope
 in shallow soils, the removal of deep-rooted vegetation that binds colluviums (loose,
unconsolidated sediments) to bedrock
 Construction, agricultural or forestry activities (logging) which change the amount of water
which infiltrates the soil.

The formation as well as the destruction of landforms in every natural process falls within a
domain. However, combinations of forces are at work here. A landslide is associated with hill-slopes,
but rain could be another contributing factor. But neither all hill-slopes nor all rain-affected areas are
susceptible to landslides. In many places in Uttarakhand, major landslides occur because of blasting
carried out for road cuttings. Landslides can be grouped into three categories:

(i) Those which are predictable, which cause heavy loss of life and extensive damage, for
example, Karmi landslide in 1983 and very recent landslide of Berinag 1996.
(ii) Those whose threat is known
(iii) The third category of landslides is that which occurs because of development projects
such as dams, reservoirs, housing schemes, or new roads.

The physical control of landslide is an engineering problem whose solution lies in the correct
identification of the causes of terrain instability. Factors that can cause instability of terrain are:
undercutting by water, weathering of weaker strata at the toe of the slope, washing out of granular
material by seepage erosion, man-made cuts and excavations, natural accumulation of water, man-
made pressure, and build-up of pore-water pressure.

 Landslides in India

Extending for about 3,000 km from west to east and lying on 27-2800 N. lat, the extra peninsular
region of India, commonly referred as Himalaya, represents the largest mountain chain of the
country. The Himalayan region is the most complex, most popular, most fragile and tallest of the
world’s mountain regions.

Himalayas can be divided into three mountain ranges between the NamcheBarwa Peak (7755 m) in
the east and Nanga Parvat (8125 m) in the west, and from north to south. These are (i) The Greater
Himalaya, (ii) The Lesser Himalaya and (iii) The Shivaliks

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The Greater Himalaya extends in the north of the Himalayan region. Geographically, it extends across
the Indian states of Jammu and Kashmir, Himachal Pradesh, Uttarakhand, and Nepal. The Himalayan
belt is subjected to extreme weather conditions, accelerated process of erosion caused by high
magnitude of surface gradient and frequent landslides owing to geo-dynamic instability.

The Lesser Himalayan mountain ranges, which are also called the middle Himalaya, extend parallel
to the south of the Great Himalaya. The southern slopes of these ranges have considerably steep
gradients, whereas the northern slopes are marked by comparatively lower surface gradients and
are covered with conical forests. Therefore, the southern slopes are frequently subject to erosion,
landslides and other land degradations. This part of the Himalaya has considerable high population
density and is the zone of concentration of settlements, agriculture and various other human
activities.

The Shivaliks are the outer hills and valley zones consisting of the outermost forest belt of the lower
ranges. In between Shivalik ranges and the Lesser Himalaya, there are a number of large and
longitudinal villages which are geographically known as ‘Doons’. Dehradun in Uttaranchal is situated
in such a valley called the Doon Valley. Doons are very fertile and agriculturally prosperous places.

Majority of landslides of India occur mostly in the above mentioned regions. The table below gives
the incidences of landslides in India

Incidences (occurrences) of Landslides in India

Region Incidences of Landslides

Himalayas High to very high
North-eastern Hills High
Western Ghats and the Nilgiris Modern to high
Cattle lost Low
Vindhayachal Low

Landslides Zonation Mapping is a modern method to identify landslides prone areas and has been in
use in India since 1980’s. The major parameters that call for evaluation are as follows:

1. Slope-Magnitude, length and direction

2. Soil thickness

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 3. Land use
4. Drainage- pattern and density
5. Landslide affected population

 Landslide Hazard Assessment:

Landslide hazard assessment is concerned with providing answers to some crucial questions in all
stages o construction activities from planning to maintenance.

The questions could be as follows:

Where will the landslide occur?

How much of the slope will be involved?

When will the landslide occur?

How hazardous is the anticipated landslide?

How fast will the landslide travel?

And how far will the landslide retrogress (go back to the earlier state)?

 Preventive measures:

A significant reduction in landslide hazards can be achieved by preventing or minimizing the

exposure of population and facilities to landslides and by physically controlling landslides that occur.
The problem of management of landslides through effective control measures would require
enormous financial resources, which will never be available. Hence, the wisdom lies in full
exploitation of human resources and in making best use of local skills and materials.

Some critical measures that should be undertaken to prevent further landslides are drainage
measures which would include surface draining, and sub-surface drainage, erosion control measures
which would consist of bamboo check dams, terracing, jute and coir netting, rock fall control
measures which would comprise grass plantation, vegetated dry masonry wall, retaining wall, and
afforestation.

The control works that are actually carried out in the landslide areas are primarily for the purpose
of saving life. Secondly, for the preservation of public structures and buildings and thirdly, o prevent

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the disruption of road traffic and to prevent flooding in the event of a landslide damming (build a
dam across) a river.

Unit – 4: Exogenous hazards

The Asia-Pacific region faces 60% of all major disasters recorded in the world, while India is
a major disaster-prone country in the region. India has been ranked 4th amongst the most disaster

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prone countries in the world. The most important natural disasters, according to the frequency of
their occurrence countrywide in the last 25 years are floods, cyclones, droughts and earthquakes.

Cyclones are considered to be the most destructive among the natural disasters, when viewed in
terms of their severity and extent of destruction. Cyclones in India originate mostly in the Bay of
Bengal. The states of Andhra Pradesh, Orissa, Tamil Nadu, and west Bengal are more prone to severe
cyclones. The past experience indicates that Andhra Pradesh has suffered the maximum amount on
account of disasters.

Cyclone Prone area – India

 Damages from cyclones in Andhra Pradesh:

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The state of AP has a vast coast line of 1030 km abutting the Bay of Bengal.The population vulnerable
to cyclones in 9 districts of AP is 28.73 million.Of this over 3.3 million lives in the shore areas in about
620 villages with in a belt of 5 km from the shore line.Out of 620 villages in shore areas, 40% of the
population is located within a distance of 1 km from the sea. Since 1900, Coastal districts have faced
about 60 devastating cyclones.4 of them, in fact, have caused considerable damage to life and
property. A summary of damages sustained during 1977, 1979, 1990 and 1996 cyclones are
presented in the table below:

1977 cyclone 1979 cyclone 1990 cyclone 1996 cyclone

Human lives lost 9059 638 967 1062
Houses 1,45,000 2,60,000 6,59,520 3,34,500
Destroyed
Houses Damaged 8,78,275 20,00,000 7,80,140 3,13,300
Cattle Lost 66,970 78,536 23,728 19,595

Although it is acknowledged that one can’t control cyclones, the effects of cyclones can be
mitigated through effective and efficient mitigation policies and strategies. Since the 1977 cyclone,
there has been a considerable improvement in disaster mitigation measures in Andhra Pradesh /
India as evidenced during subsequent cyclones.

 Cyclone Mitigation measures taken in AP/India:

Disaster mitigation is the term used to refer to all actions to reduce the impact of a disaster
that can be taken prior to its occurrence, including preparedness and long-term risk reduction
measures. It includes both the planning and implementation of measures to reduce the risks
associated with disasters.Mitigation efforts generally offer the best and most cost-effective long-term
methods of dealing with disasters. With proper planning, most mitigation measures can be integrated
into normal development activities at a relatively modest cost. Presently, most of the disaster-prone
countries are spending huge amounts of money on post-disaster relief and rehabilitation measures.
Instead of spending after the occurrence of disaster, it is better to invest on mitigation measures
which will reduce the impact of disasters to a large extent.

As part of mitigation measures to counter cyclone disasters in the state/country, the following
steps have been taken.

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 Early Warning System

Communication Infrastructure

Coastal Shelter Belts

The Community Cyclone Shelters

Construction of Permanent Houses

Training and Education

Early Warning System:

The first and most important way to reduce risks from cyclones is the installation of an
effective early warning system. Since 1977, forecasting techniques and warning systems for cyclones
have greatly improved and were applied successfully during subsequent cyclones.The entire
coastline of the country is fitted with 10 power radars with a range of 400km, of which 3 are operated
on the Andhra coast.

Any cyclonic movement within 400 km from the coastline can’t go undetected.All village Panchayats
within the 10km belt on the coastline in AP/India are provided with a satellite-based automatic
warning system.Besides, the state and district control rooms are linked with the Indian
Meteorological Department’s Regional observatory at Chennai.The INSAT satellites provide weather
pictures twice a day. It is now, therefore, possible to alert people 3-5 days in advance about a possible
cyclone and cyclone led rains.The cyclone warnings are provided in two stages. In the first stage, a
‘Cyclone Alert’ is issued 48 hrs before the commencement of adverse weather along the coast.In the
second stage, a ‘Cyclone Warning’ is issued 24 hrs before the anticipated rainfall.The ports and
fisheries warnings start much earlier.The warning systems have proved to be a highly reliable form
of communication system for cyclonic warnings, especially during the 1990 and 1996 cyclones.

Communication Infrastructure:

Communication plays a vital role in cyclone disaster mitigation. Ironically, when a cyclone
strikes, the mainline communication networks become its first victims.Having lost both the
transportation and communication networks, the people of affected areas suffer in total
isolation.This is exactly the kind of situation where a second line unconventional communications
system can provide a valuable service.Radio was not originally intended to be such a system, but of

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late, it has emerged as one of the most important tools of disaster mitigation techniques.The
Government of AP/India has indeed taken a lot of initiative, and as a consequence Radio is today
being used very effectively as a second line of communication system in cyclone disaster
mitigation.The National Institute of Amateur Radio (NIAM) has established HAM radio networks
along the coastal belt of Andhra Pradesh.Today over 150 HAM stations are operating in the cyclone-
prone areas of Andhra Pradesh/India.

Coastal Shelter Belts:

The Mitra Committee (1970) as well as the Saha Committee (1983) on disaster mitigation
recommended Shelter Belts as the only substantial solution of breaking the intensity of cyclones and
reducing damages.During the 1977 cyclone, because of the presence of forest, Yedurumondi Island
and the adjoining Repalle did not get affected much by the tidal wave. So Shelter belts have been
recognized as effective wind and tide breakers.The benefits of shelter belt are manifold.Apart from
acting as effective wind-breakers and protecting crops from being damaged, they prevent soil
erosion.Shelter belts are also source of various products, especially firewood, pulp and timber. AP
has started raising Shelter belts after disturbing experience of 1977 cyclone.AP has the 3 rd longest
coastline of the country, contributing to 16% of the total. Since 1978, an area of 25,803 hectares along
the coast has been brought under shelter belts.

The Community Cyclone Shelters:

The idea of constructing cyclone shelters, which are capable of withstanding cyclonic effects and tidal
waves, was conceived soon after the 1977 cyclone. The the Government of AP accepted the
recommendations of the cyclone Disaster Mitigation Committee (CDMC) (1971) and has taken up the
construction of cyclone shelters in all 9 coastal districts, giving priority to those villages which are
nearer to the coast.The collectors of the coastal districts had undertaken a detailed survey and
estimated that a total of 166 cyclone shelters were required within 20 km from the shore all along
the sea coast. By 1990, 828 cyclone shelters were in place at strategic locations, each with a capacity
of 200 persons.During the 1990 cyclone, not a single casualty was reported from any one of the
cyclone shelters.All the shelters irrespective of their design withstood the tidal waves and
rainstorms.Though the capacity of each shelter is around 200 persons, during the 1990 cyclone,
almost double the number of people was accommodated in them.After 1990, the remaining 848
shelters were recommended to be constructed – 424 circular type with a capacity of 200 each and

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424 rectangular type with a capacity of 500 each.The cyclone shelters have proved to be possibly the
most successful part of the cyclone mitigation policies.In normal course of time, most of the shelters
are used as public utility buildings. Generally for running primary and upper primary schools, some
rural livestock units, and veterinary hospitals.Shelters with the capacity of 500 or more are being
used for social functions. As on today, only 25% of the coastal population can be accommodated in
the existing cyclone shelters. Clearly, this analysis stresses the need for the construction of additional
shelters in vulnerable areas.

Construction of Permanent Houses:

Following the cyclone of 1977, there was a tremendous call for building improved houses which
could withstand high winds and tidal waves.The State Government and Voluntary Organizations have
constructed around 4 lakh concrete houses following the standards laid down by the Roads and
Buildings Departments.Due to the cost of materials and construction, the plinth area was
uncomfortably constructed smaller (18 sq.m) than the traditional house (24 sq.m)Many of the
structures are not now in good condition mainly because of cracks, structural failure in walls and
erosion at ground level. When a survey has been conducted, it was found that the concrete houses
were not built according to the technical criteria.

Training and education:If mitigation is confined to measures taken by public officials, it is likely to
fail.Public awareness programs are also essential to mitigate the impact of cyclones.The NGO’s in the
coastal areas had gone on a major campaign of educating the population.These above mentioned
disaster mitigation measures for a cyclone holds good not only for Coastal Andhra Pradesh, but also
for all those areas which are prone to cyclones in the country, as cyclones do not differentiate
between areas.

 Human Perception to Cyclone hazard:

Before attempting to look into the processes of choice employed by both public and private sectors,
it is necessary to examine people’s perception of cyclone hazard. The choices stem necessarily from
a perception as well as knowledge of available means to reduce the hazard.

Respondent’s perception of Cyclone Hazard:

Respondents interviewed revealed an extremely high awareness of past experience. As a

matter of fact, all of the adults in the area had experienced major storms in the past.Despite the fact
that most of the respondents experienced storms more than once, some still don’t believe that they

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would get struck with a severe storm again in future. As the mitigation measures are improving,
people are getting a better feeling that they would survive in case of any future events. It is interesting
to note here that although maximum percentage of respondents expects cyclonic storms in future,
much of them were uncertain with regard to possibilities of future storms and damages. Of these
nearly all attribute control of natural phenomena to ‘God’s will’. Even though few acknowledge a
repetitive pattern of cyclones and their increasing or decreasing frequency or intensity, a large
number of respondents view cyclones as ‘God’s will’.

These interpretations do not answer the question as to why people continue to live in areas
subject to natural hazards. Over 85% of the respondents have no plans to leave the areas despite
their past experience with hazards. In fact they are using their past experiences and learned to live
with hazards, mitigating the effects that it could cause onto them. Not only was the area of birth place
of most respondents, but owing to scarcity of land and inadequate employment opportunities
elsewhere have they had any freedom of movement from the area.

 Human Adjustments to Coastal Hazards:

In the course of long habitation in the coastal regions, many adjustments to the hazards of coastal
hazards have evolved. The way of its life and adjustment to the coastal hazard is influenced by
tradition, orthodox ideas, beliefs and attitudes. The fact that nearly 3/4th of the respondents did not
show willingness to go somewhere else for subsistence is enough to explain their indifference to
hazard despite their recognition of it. Even when a violent storm seems to be approaching the area,
many follow ‘wait and see’ policy. This is the major reason for suggesting a set of adjustments which
are primitive and rudimentary in nature.

The idea that man has nothing to do with nature reveals the attitude of the majority of the people
with regard to decision making. Besides, optimism is another factor which plays a great role in
decision making. The entire range of adjustments against coastal hazards should be viewed with this
general background in mind.

The adjustments could be divided in general into two broad categories, namely

(1) a variety of adjustments requiring prior preparation, and

(2) Emergency adjustments without prior preparation.

(1) Adjustments requiring prior preparation:

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 This comprises measures taken by the people, which are somewhat permanent in nature and
sometimes are incorporated into original construction or in the course of replacement of damaged
structures. Somewhat permanent nature of these adjustments, which involve minor construction,
also demands that they should be done prior to the occurrence of the hazards. However, many
respondents undertook one or more of the following adjustments.

a) Planting trees around the homestead: This adjustment helps reducing both heavy winds
and high tides/storm surges/floods. Whenever a person in the coastal region is questioned,
they say that they practice this type of adjustment. The planting is done so densely that in
most cases they completely conceal the houses. From outside they look like scattered growth
of vegetation and it can hardly be assumed that there are houses inside the thickets. These
trees also contribute regularly to the increase of the family income as well.

During the cyclones these trees afford very good protection except, of course, when
in rare cases trees are knocked down by storm, causing damage to the houses. Even then the
first onslaught of the storm is faced by these trees, thereby protecting the houses are
preventing their damage to the great extent. However, in some areas, the recurring intrusion
of saline water during the growing period of trees makes this form of adjustment difficult. If
the trees survive at all, they take a considerable amount of time to grow completely strong.
Houses, therefore, lay bare and exposed to the hazard.

b) Supporting the house with bamboo poles: This is one of the common types of adjustments
adopted particularly after a cyclone warning is given. Bamboo poles which are usually kept
ready by some individuals in the house are placed on the ground diagonally with the upper
end touching sidewalls of the house. Such poles are generally placed all around the house or
on the side opposite to the direction from which the cyclone is expected. This measure is
adopted with the hope that the supporting poles would prevent the house from being blown
away or washed out by storm surges.
c) Tying the house with ropes: This is a practice for preventing the house being blown away
or washed away by storm surges. When warning is received about the occurrence of the
cyclone or they themselves can realize that a cyclone may strike soon, may people, as an
emergency measure, tie their houses, particularly the roofs, to some nearby trees or poles
with strong ropes which are previously kept ready for this purpose. In many cases the
practice of tying the sidewalls along the roof with strong ropes acts as a kind of land anchor.

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d) Construction of raised platforms: This type of construction is the most common type of
adjustments found to be prevalent in the area. These are of bamboo or bamboo matted raised
platforms of various sizes constructed in the house and supported by four to six bamboo
poles. The platform lies generally 3-4 feet above the floor and is erected roughly parallel to
the ground. Although bamboo is the chief material for its building, sometimes pieces of wood
are also used. These serve a dual purpose, affording a shelter to persons and domestic
animals, and protecting the property from destruction. Not many people can afford to have
these in their houses because of the construction cost involved and the lack of materials
available locally. However, these appear to be somewhat useful during the abnormal tidal
inundation although they generally cannot withstand storm surges. They serve to store the
useful household belongings when the water level raises high enough to inundate the room.
On the other hand during the time of exceptional flooding the people themselves, children in
particular, are forced to take shelter on them. Poultry birds and other domestic animals are
given shelter on these structures occasionally when flooding affects the area.
e) Hay-loft or attic: besides the construction of raised platforms, sometimes overhead
platforms similar to hayloft or attic are also erected. Such structures that lie just below the
roof and hang overhead like ceilings are also made of bamboo. They serve more or less the
same purpose as the raised platforms but are also useful for storing various types of articles
including specially prepared bamboo poles to be used for providing a necessary support to
the house and roof during the cyclones.
f) Structural Change:One of the most important permanent adjustments to flood hazard is the
design and construction of the structure to minimize damage or the elevation of the site above
the tide water elevation. Many of the respondents adopt this kind of adjustment. These fall
mainly into the following categories.
i) Construction of special type of roofs: the construction of a special type of roof for the
house is also a way of providing protection against storms. In order that the wind cannot
have severe effect on the house, many people build the roofs in a particular way. The roofs,
usually made of thatch and sometimes of time (C.I. Sheets – Corrugated galvanized Iron),
are very low and remain only about 3-4 feet above the ground on the side from which the
wind is most likely to hit the house. The thatched roof is generally considered to be
economic and is preferable to tin (C.I. sheets). Not many people can afford to have tin roofs.
At any rate, thatch being not very costly, the cost of rebuilding the roof can be kept within
economic means.

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 ii) Anchorage devices: Anchorage devices, the support of the very deep wooden frame from
the ground to the roof, usually provide a strong foundation to the house. Invariably, the
wooden frames go much deeper in the ground, a practice which is common in this area.
iii) Elevation of the plinth of the courtyard: The striking feature of the household unit is its
elevation a few feet above the normal tide level or at least build over a high plinth which is
higher than the surrounding area. Elevation of houses has necessitated digging up earth
from nearby places adjacent to the houses and these in turn have been covered into ponds
or tanks, mostly rainfed, which are used for a variety of purposes. The height of platforms
is usually decided by the person’s past experience and his means. The raising of the house
as an adjustment to common tidal flooding is, thus, very widespread.
g) Keeping readymade materials at hand:Other peculiar measures which the coastal dwellers
adopt in times of emergency consist of simple life buoys of banana trees or bamboo and
banana and rope which are kept ready within their tree-surrounded compounds. The
purpose behind this is that if the storm surge takes menacing proportions and washes away
the house, the people at least will be in a position to save their lives with the help of the raft
either made of bamboo or banana. This kind of emergency action requires cutting nearby
banana trees even at the eleventh hour.
Some people also keep big pitchers in their house and when the water level rises they take
the important utensils and other valuable materials inside the pitcher and try to remain
afloat. Normally with an earthen pot one can remain afloat for a long time. Although some
prior preparation is required for them, both of these are in fact emergency measures and
adopted only when other adjustments fail.
h) Construction of raised platform, in an open area: This kind of raised structure are built
for providing shelter to the domestic animals, particularly cattle, goats, sheep and buffaloes
during tidal inundation. This involves the raising of land in an area varying from 500-800
sq.ft. or more to a considerable height of 10 to 15 feet from the ground (usually a few feet
above the high tide level) and then over it, the erection of a bamboo shed with thatched
roofing. There could also be a bamboo fence around the sides of the structure and an entrance
which allows the animals to come up. Just before the normal high tides when the grazing lands
go for water, animals are brought inside this structure, where they are kept confined until
tidal water subsides. With the receding of the tidal water, animals are brought down and
allowed to graze freely once again. As these structures are for animals, one or two attendants
usually live in these structures temporarily. These structures have also been found to be used

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 by people during the storms, but for human adjustment against storm surges they are not
ideal as they remain in the hazard zone on one hand and away from the village on the other.

(2) Emergency adjustments without prior preparation:

Adjustments of this type consist of measures which are adopted only during the time of
emergency when the wind or surge of water becomes unusually threatening. These do not involve
any new construction and thereby any expenditure as such and they are restored to only when the
first set of adjustments fails, or when no other alternative remains. Most emergency actions that may
have been taken in response to a great danger involve little or no prior preparation. These include
the removal of life and property from the path of the water or taking protective action to minimize
damages from actual inundation. It was not surprising to find that some of the common actions cited
by the respondents consisted of getting out from the path of the danger and doing nothing with
regard to damage reduction measures. This is due to lack of both time and helping hands, and
transport in addition to a communication system to plan for the evacuation, elevation or removal of
their furnishings. Thus emergency measures undertaken then are rudimentary, improvised and
primitive – at times.
a) Safety of household materials: When it is felt that it is no longer safe to remain inside the house,
hectic activity follows with regard to taking care of the household materials: (i) household
articles considered to be useful are wither placed upon the elevated platforms just below the roof
or are bound together and thrown in to the shallow pond with the hope of retrieving them later
if they survive at all. (ii) more valuable goods including jewellery are wrapped either with a paper
or pieces of cloth and put inside the earthen kitchen oven (iii) a great majority of the respondents
put valuable materials under the floor of the house or other places at a depth of 3 or 4 ft. and hope
that they would be safe from inundation and also would be easy to get back.
b) Personal safety: when the water rises to an unusually high level people climb on top of their
thatched roof and at other times cut its binding, thereby converting it into a raft on which they
can remain afloat. In the past many were actually saved from drowning when they were washed
away but saved by surrounding trees of the homestead. Another measure is to climb a high tree
and stay clinging to the branches until the menace is over. In such cases they have to bind
themselves to the tree with a rope or cloth lest they are washed away by the onrush of water. The
date palm tree is preferred since it is strong and affords a good support.
For safety of the women and children a peculiar measure is adopted which includes tying up
of available wooden cots and other floating materials to a nearby tree with a strong rope and

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 placing women and children on the raft-like structure. This measure is considered safe because
they expect that with the rise of water level, the raft also will continue to rise.
Other uncommon measures which deserve attention are keeping windows and doors open
to permit the water to pass through. The most common concern which has been reported by the
respondents is with the safe preservation of match boxes. Many would wrap them with paper or
put them inside a container which is then wrapped in many layers of cloth. At times people have
been found carrying them on top of their heads.
c) Safety of Animals: at such times when it appears impossible to provide safe shelters for the cattle
and other animals, many people set their cattle free so that they may flee the calamity and find
their own shelter. In most cases the cattle die, but if fortunately they do survive, their owners try
to find them and bring them back.

 Causes of Floods
Natural Causes of Floods:
1. High rainfall:
Heavy rainfall raises the water level. When the water level is higher than the river bank or the dams,
the water comes out from the river, and there will be flooding.

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 2. Snowmelt:
Because of global warming, the temperature of current years is higher than the temperature of years
ago. The ice caps melt in summer, and the water goes into the sea. The water raises the sea level, and
makes the river level rise. When river level rises, flooding may occur.
3. Relief (release)
Flooding often occurs in lowlands. This is because rivers flow more slowly in low-lying areas. If the
water volume increases suddenly, floods occur.
4. Coastal flooding
Flooding also occurs in coastal areas. High tides or storms cause the water level to rise. If the water
level is higher than the level of the coastal lowland, flooding will occur.
Human Causes of Floods
1. Deforestation
Large areas of forests near/besides the rivers have been cleared. The lands are used to make room
for settlement, roads and farmland. Less vegetation protects the soil; the soil is quickly lost to rivers
and the sea.This raises the river bed, so the river overflows its banks easily.
2. Poor farming
Some farming practices can damage the vegetation cover, which might also become a reason for
flooding.
3. Poor water management
When the dams are poorly constructed or maintained,they can easily collapse and this result in
flooding. Compared to concrete dams, several earthen dams might fail.
4. Population pressure
Because of large population, everything needs more, like wood, land and food. These results in storing
more water, when it can’t be maintained properly, overflow of reservoirs might take place causing
floods in the downstream.

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  Flood hazard in India
India, being a peninsular country and surrounded by the Arabian Sea, Indian Ocean and the
Bay of Bengal, is quite prone to flood. As per the Geological Survey of India (GSI), the major flood
prone areas of India cover almost 12.5% area of the country.Every year, flood, the most common
disaster in India causes immense loss to the country's property and lives.
Flood Prone Areas in India
The states falling within the periphery of "India Flood Prone Areas" are West
Bengal, Orissa,Andhra Pradesh, Kerala, Assam, Bihar, Gujarat,Uttar Pradesh, Haryana and Punjab.
The intense monsoon rains from southwest causes rivers like Brahmaputra, Ganga, Yamuna etc. to
swell their banks, which in turn floods the adjacent areas.

Over the past few decades, central India has become familiar with precipitation events like torrential
rains and flash floods. The major flood prone areas in India are the river banks and deltas of Ravi,
Yamuna-Sahibi, Gandak, Sutlej, Ganga, Ghaggar, Kosi, Teesta, Brahmaputra, Mahanadi, Mahananda,
Damodar, Godavari, Mayurakshi, Sabarmati and their tributaries.

Highest flood prone areas in India

Though the north-Indian plains prone to flood more, the "India flood prone areas" can be broadly
categorized in three divisions:

 Ganga Basin: The Ganga Basin gets flooded mostly in the northern part by its northern
tributaries. The badly affected states of the Ganga basin are West Bengal, Bihar and Uttar
Pradesh.

Besides the Ganga, rivers like Sarada, Rapti, Gandak and Ghagra causes flood in eastern part
of Uttar Pradesh. The Yamuna is famous for flooding Haryana and Delhi. Bihar experiences
massive dangerous flood every year. River Burhi, Bagmati, Gandak, Kamla along with many
small rivers contribute to that. In West Bengal, rivers like Mahananda, Bhagirathi, Damodar,
Ajay etc. causes floods because of tidal effects and insufficient river channels.

 Brahmaputra and Barak Basins: The River banks of Brahmaputra and Barak gets flooded
due to the surplus water found in the Brahmaputra basin and the Barak basin. These rivers
along with their tributaries flood the northeastern states like West Bengal, Assam and Sikkim.

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 Jaldakha, Teesta and Torsa in northern West Bengal and rivers in Manipur often overflow
their banks.

 Central India and Deccan Rivers Basin: In Orissa, spilling over of river banks by Mahanadi,
Baitarni and Brahmani causes havoc. The deltaic area formed by these three rivers is thickly
populated. Even some small rivers of Kerala and mud stream from the nearby hills add on to
the destruction. Southern and central India observes floods caused by Narmada, Godavari,
Tapi, Krishna and Mahanadi due to heavy rainfall. Cyclonic storms in the deltaic regions of
Godavari, Mahanadi and Krishna even floods the coastal regions of Andhra Pradesh, Orissa
and Tamil Nadu occasionally.

The table given below gives an idea about the damage caused in the flood prone areas in India:

Average Annual Flood Damage (1953 – 1999)

State Area liable to Floods(million Ha.)

Total Damage Rs.13,400 million

Area Affected 8.11 million hectare

Crop Area Affected 3.57 million hectare

Human Lives Lost 1579 Nos.

Cattle Lost 95,000 Nos.

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Top 10 Flood Prone Areas in India

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  Human Perception towards floods:
Human perception towards any hazard relies on several factors, like the individual
characteristics, such as gender, age, socio-economic condition, cultural and religious values, and
several others, but it also depends on the familiarity with the risk source, on the knowledge about
the hazard impacts and on trust on the entities and measures designed to risk management. In hazard
situations each social environment develops its own reactions and behaviors that derive from
its social, cultural, economic and political characteristics.
Generally there is a kind of foolishness in the behavior of floodplain inhabitantssince they
continue to occupy those areas. Sometimes, this can be explained by the cost-benefit perceptionof
the inhabitants, which is in some cases positive, considering the socio-economic advantageson living
on those areas. Other than the people who lost their near and dear ones, many people who got
affected to floods, say that they have suffered some damage, exclusively material damage like damage
to furniture, electric appliances, buildings or loss of livestock. Even then, these affected people won’t
migrate until and unless they feel that they can’t continue to take any further blows from floods.
Most of the people who got affected to floods tend to connect occurrence and aggravation of
floods with more global climatic change phenomenon. Some believe increased precipitation is caused
by global climatic change, global warming and the destruction of the ozone layer (mainly due to
pollution, deforestation and forest fires). These are the few most frequently stated reasons
connecting between climate change and flood risk aggravation. Some believe the reason for floods is
heavy precipitation. However, many believe the increased floods are due to human interventions,
such as failure to clear streams and adjacent land, the inability of rivers to drain, construction work
on flood plains and changes in land use.
From all those who survived flood hazard, high percent believe that improving existing
houses and renovating it with good construction materials is seen as the best solution in their
struggle to avoid hazards posed by flood.

Mitigation of Floods

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According to Plate (2002) and Silva (2003), participation of the population and integration of itsrisk
perception, when dealing with cases of flooding, are essential aspects of risk mitigation andmanagement
measures

Soil Erosion

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 Soil layers: A mature soil can be divided into three basic parts:

 Topsoil – the top layer, usually dark and rich in organic matter. It contains nutrients and water
required by plants for their growth.
 Subsoil – under the topsoil, and usually paler. It helps to anchor plant roots, and provides water.
 Parent material – from which the soil is formed.

 Soil Erosion is the process by which soil is removed from the Earth's surface by exogenetic processes
such as wind or water flow, and then transported and deposited in other locations.

While erosion is a natural process, human activities have increased by 10-40 times the rate at which
natural erosion is occurring globally.

Excessive erosion causes problems such as decrease in the agricultural productivity due to land
degradation finally leads to desertification, ecological collapse due to loss of the nutrient rich
upper soil layers,and sedimentation of waterways.

Water and wind are the two primary causes of land degradation; combined, they are responsible for
84% of degraded land, making excessive erosion one of the most significant global environmental
problems.

Industrial agriculture, deforestation, roads, and urban cover are amongst the most significant human
activities in regard to their effect on stimulating erosion. However, there are many prevention and
remediation practices that can curtail or limit erosion of denuded soils.

Natural erosion:The Earth has been shaped by wind, water, volcanoes and glaciers from its
birth. The forces that wear away at the land are considered part of natural erosion.

Accelerated erosion:The rate of erosion can be increased by unusual events such as

earthquakes and cyclones, or by human activity such as cutting down forests. Erosion caused by the
interference of these activities causes accelerated erosion.

When only some of the topsoil is affected, it is difficult to distinguish between normal and accelerated
erosion. But it will become clear-cut that accelerated erosion took place when all the topsoil and some
subsoil have been lost from the original location.

Where does the soil go?

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 Water run-off or gravity carries soil to lowland or stream sites. These deposits may:

 form new soils, as on plains that are regularly flooded

 lie on farmland, reducing production
 run into stream or river beds
 be carried out to sea.

 The main forms of soil erosion are:

 surface erosion
 fluvial erosion
 mass-movement erosion
 stream bank erosion
Surface erosion: When wind, rain or frost detaches soil particles from the surface, the particles are
washed or blown off.

Sheet erosion: This occurs when rain falls on bare or sparsely

covered soil, loosening fine particles (silt and clay) that are carried
downhill in surface run-off. Sheet erosion lowers the fertility of the soil,
because it removes the most productive layer, which has usually been
enriched by fertilizer.

Wind erosion:The wind can remove the valuable fine soil on the
land surface. Seasonally strong winds hit many areas across the globe. If
covering vegetation has been grazed or disturbed, wind erosion can be
severe.

Fluvial erosion:This occurs when running water cuts into shallow channels or deep channels into
the soil.

Rill erosion:On sloping land, particularly if cultivated, water

run-off may gather in small V-shaped channels or rills. These are
particularly evident on wind-blown dust soils, which occur on all hill
soils.

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 Gully erosion: Gully erosion occurs on unconsolidated sub-
soils. These are generally deep and generate a lot of sediment,
which often feeds into rivers. Gullies tend to erode at their head,
eating back into the landscape.

Tunnel gullying: When water enters the soil on a slope,

usually down cracks after a dry period, it cleans out the subsoil to
form a tunnel. The soil often later collapses inwards, and an open
gully forms.

Mass-movement erosion: When gravity combines with heavy rain or earthquakes, whole slopes can
slump, slip or slide.

Slips:Slips occur when the soil (topsoil and subsoil) on

slopes becomes saturated. Unless held by plant roots to the
underlying surface, it slides downhill, exposing the underlying
material.They are a direct result of the change from forest to
field.Slips are common where the underlying rock is mudstone or
siltstone.

Earth flows:These can be spectacular, but are not

widespread. Saturated soils move downwards, and may include
underlying rock. However, the surface vegetative mat stays intact,
and forms humps and hollows.

Scree erosion:This occurs in steep or mountainous areas,

where the underlying rocks are greywacke. At high altitude, gravity
pulls material downhill into a fan shape, which can be quite
spectacular. There is debate over whether this is accelerated or
normal erosion. What is clear is that screes can continue to move if
vegetative cover is reduced.

Stream bank erosion: This is common throughout the world,

especially in rivers and watercourses with periodic flooding.
Although not dramatic, it is significant because most of the valuable
farmland lies beside main rivers, on alluvial terraces.

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 Causes or factors affecting erosion rates:

Precipitation and wind speed: In general, given similar vegetation and ecosystems, areas with high-
intensity precipitation, more frequent rainfall, more wind, or more storms are expected to have more
erosion. Rainfall intensity is the primary determinant of erosivity, with higher intensity rainfall
generally resulting in more erosion. The size and velocity of rain drops is also an important factor.
Larger and higher-velocity rain drops have greater kinetic energy, and thus their impact will displace
soil particles by larger distances than smaller, slower-moving rain drops.

Soil structure and composition: The composition, moisture, and compaction of soil are all major
factors in determining the erosivity caused by rainfall. Sediments containing more clay tend to be
more resistant to erosion than those with sand or silt, because the clay helps bind soil particles
together. Soil containing high levels of organic materials are often more resistant to erosion, because
the organic materials strengthens soil structure and create a stronger, more stable soil structure.

The amount of water present in the soil before the precipitation also plays an important role, because
it sets limits on the amount of water that can be absorbed by the soil (and hence prevents from
flowing on the surface as erosive runoff). Wet, saturated soils will not be able to absorb as much rain
water, leading to higher levels of surface runoff and thus higher erosivity for a given volume of
rainfall. Soil compaction also affects the permeability of the soil to water, and hence the amount of
water that flows away as runoff. More compacted soils will have a larger amount of surface runoff
than less compacted soils.

Vegetative cover:Vegetation acts as an interface between the atmosphere and the soil. It increases
the permeability of the soil to rainwater, thus decreasing runoff. It shelters the soil from winds, which
results in decreased wind erosion, as well as advantageous changes in microclimate. The roots of the
plants bind the soil together, and interweave with other roots, forming a more solid mass that is less
susceptible to both water and wind erosion. The removal of vegetation increases the rate of surface
erosion.

Topography: The topography of the land determines the velocity at which surface runoff will flow,
which in turn determines the erosivity of the runoff. Longer, steeper slopes (especially those without
adequate vegetative cover) are more susceptible to very high rates of erosion during heavy rains than
shorter, less steep slopes. Steeper terrain is also more prone to mudslides, landslides, and other
forms of gravitational erosion processes.

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 Conservation measures of soil erosion: There are many prevention and remediation practices that
can curtail or limit erosion of soils. Conservation measures that should be taken to prevent soil
erosion are:

Use of Vegetation: Crops and vegetables which cover the ground surface well and have extensive
root system reduce soil erosion. Plant cover protects the soil from the adverse effect of rainfall. The
grasses produce dense territory which helps in reducing soil erosion. The vegetation provides
organic matter to the soil. As a result, the fertility of soil increases and the physical condition of soil
is improved. Following cropping systems help in controlling soil erosion -

Crop rotation: Crop rotation is planned sequence of cropping. Rotation of crop is an important
method for checking erosion and maintaining productivity of soil. A good rotation should include
densely planted small grain crops, spreading legume crop etc. which may check soil erosion.

The land should not be kept without crop: There is very scope of soil erosion if there are no crops
on the land. The soil erosion decreases in different way of cropped land.

Afforestation:Afforestation means growing of forests where there were no forests before owing to
lack of seed trees or due to adverse factors such as unstable soil, aridity or swampiness. Along with
afforestation, reforestation should be undertaken which means replanting of forests at places where
they have been destroyed by uncontrolled forest fires, excessive felling and lopping. Afforestation is
the best means to check the soil erosion. Lutz and Chandler (1946) cited the following points in
support of vegetational check erosion as follows:

 Infiltration of water is favoured due to high porosity of soil under vegetation. Percolation of
water helps in preventing the soil moisture which accelerates further growth of the
vegetation.
 Surface accumulation of organic matter increases the water holding capacity of the
underground soil.
 Root system of vegetation holds the soil mechanically and provides stability of the
underground soil.
 It gives the protection against wind. The forest vegetation shields the soil from direct effect
of drought, snow and rain

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Control of grazing: Grazing increases the soil erosion. But the grazing cannot be completely stopped
in all areas. So the restricted and rotational grazing may be helpful in checking soil erosion to some
extent. The area open to grazing for sometimes should be closed for the following year to facilitate
regeneration of forests and to maintain thick ground vegetation.

Mechanical Soil Conservation measures -

Mechanical measures include various engineering techniques and structure. This practices aim at
some objective as follows:

 To divide a long slope of land into a series of shorter ones in order to reduce the velocity of
runoff water.
 To retain the water in the land for long period so as to allow maximum water to be absorbed
and held in the soil and less water flows down the slope of the land at non-erosive velocity.
 To protect the soil against erosion by water.

The important mechanical soil conservation measures are as follows:

Contour bunding: Contour bunding consists of building earthen embankment at intervals across the
slope and along the contour line of the field. A series of such bund divide the area into strips and act
as barrier to the flow of water. As a result, the amount and velocity of run-off are reduced, resulting
reducing the soil erosion.
Terracing: A terrace is an embankment of ridge of earth constructed across the slope to control run
off and to minimize soil erosion. A terrace reduces the length of the hill side slope, thereby reducing
sheet and rill erosion and prevents formation of gullies.
Contour trenching: It consist of making a series of deep pit (i.e. 2ft. wide and 1ft. deep) or trenches
across the slope at convenient distance. The soil excavated from the trenches is deposited on the
lower edge of the trenches where forest trees are planted.

Sedimentation

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 Sedimentation: Sediments are material of varying size of mineral and organic origin. Erosion is the
process of carrying away or displacement of sediment by the action of wind, water, gravity or ice.
Sedimentation is the tendency for particles in suspension to settle out of the fluid in which they are
entrained, and come to rest against a barrier. This is due to their motion through the fluid in response
to the forces acting on them; these forces can be due to gravity, centrifugal acceleration or
electromagnetism.

 Global Sedimentation problems:

All rivers contain sediments: a river, in effect, can be considered a body of flowing sediments
as much as one of flowing water. When a river is stilled behind a dam, the sediments it contains sink
to the bottom of the reservoir. The proportion of a river’s total sediment load captured by a dam –
known as its "trap efficiency" – approaches 100 per cent for many projects, especially those with
large reservoirs. As the sediments accumulate in the reservoir, so the dam gradually loses its ability
to store water for the purposes for which it was built. Every reservoir loses storage to sedimentation
although the rate at which this happens varies widely. Despite more than six decades of research,
sedimentation is still probably the most serious technical problem faced by the dam industry.
Roughly estimated for a World Bank study, around 75 cubic kilometres of sediment – nearly 1.5% of
global reservoir storage capacity – is trapped behind the world’s dams every year.
The rate of reservoir sedimentation depends mainly on the size of a reservoir relative to the amount
of sediment flowing into it: a small reservoir on an extremely muddy river will rapidly lose capacity;
a large reservoir on a very clear river may take centuries to lose an appreciable amount of storage.
Large reservoirs in the US lose storage capacity at an average rate of around 0.2 % per year, with
regional variations ranging from 0.5 % per year in the Pacific states to just 0.1 % in reservoirs in the
northeast. Major reservoirs in China lose capacity at an annual rate of 2.3 %.

 Regional Sedimentation problems

Hydrologically, the arid zone in India consists of three main zones. Zone I cover 42,900 km2 and
receive major inputs of water from more humid regions, and supports extensive irrigated agriculture.
This is a canal irrigated area and no significant sedimentation problems are encountered here.
Zone II comprises sandy plains, interdune plains, sand dunes, eroded rocky/gravelly surfaces and
isolated hillocks with a poorly developed or no stream network (148,600 km2). It contains no
integrated stream network in the conventional sense; rather, there is a system of repetitive micro-
hydrology. The internal drainage basins generate high sediment yields under occasional and sporadic
torrential rainfall.

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 Zone III represents the sloping region with an integrated stream network (94,280 km2). These are
ephemeral channels which remain dry for 90% of the year. When runoff does occur as a direct
response to torrential rainfall, flash floods result and large quantities of sediment are transported
down the valleys. In this zone the infrequent nature of rainfall and runoff encourages intensive
measurement programs.
Sandy and eroded drainage basins situated in regions characterized by occasional and
sporadic torrential rainfall generate high sediment yields. Coarse to medium grained, loose and less
compact formations generate more sediment with increasing rainfall and drainage basin slope than
the fine grained, hard and compact formations. Promoting vegetation and construction of check dams
are some of the measures recommended for controlling soil erosion and for reducing the sediment
yield from arid zone drainage basins.

 Corrective measures of Erosion & Sedimentation

Soil erosion and sedimentation controlled through development regulations can include:
- Requirements for a sedimentation basin during construction or for developments with large
amounts of impervious surface area.
- Greater use of soil conservation practices on farmlands.
- Stabilization of stream channels to reduce channel erosion.
- Protection or creation of vegetative or buffer strips near areas adjacent towater bodies to
reduce wind and water erosion potential.
- Increasing landscaping requirements throughout the watershed.
- Reducing the amount of impervious surfaces.
- More frequent street and sewer cleaning to reduce system back-ups and theamount of
nonpoint pollutants entering surface waters.
- Reducing the creation of impervious surfaces, such as downsizing parking lots.

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