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Sustainability of winter tourism in a changing climate over Kashmir Himalaya

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Abstract

Mountain areas are sensitive to climate change. Implications of climate change can be seen in less snow, receding glaciers, increasing temperatures, and decreasing precipitation. Climate change is also a severe threat to snow-related winter sports such as skiing, snowboarding, and cross-country skiing. The change in climate will put further pressure on the sensitive environment of high mountains. Therefore, in this study, an attempt has been made to know the impact of climate change on the snow precipitation, water resources, and winter tourism in the two famous tourist resorts of the Kashmir Valley. Our findings show that winters are getting prolonged with little snow falls on account of climate change. The average minimum and maximum temperatures are showing statistically significant increasing trends for winter months. The precipitation is showing decreasing trends in both the regions. A considerable area in these regions remains under the snow and glacier cover throughout the year especially during the winter and spring seasons. However, time series analysis of LandSat MODIS images using Normalized Difference Snow Index shows a decreasing trend in snow cover in both the regions from past few years. Similarly, the stream discharge, comprising predominantly of snow- and glacier-melt, is showing a statistically significant declining trend despite the melting of these glaciers. The predicted futuristic trends of temperature from Predicting Regional Climates for Impact Studies regional climate model are showing an increase which may enhance snow-melting in the near future posing a serious threat to the sustainability of winter tourism in the region. Hence, it becomes essential to monitor the changes in temperature and snow cover depletion in these basins in order to evaluate their effect on the winter tourism and water resources in the region.

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Acknowledgements

The research work was conducted as part of the Ministry of Earth Sciences, Government of India sponsored national project titled “Assessing the Climate Change Impacts on Hydrology of Jhelum Basin” and the financial assistance received from the Ministry under the project to accomplish this research is thankfully acknowledged. The authors express gratitude to the anonymous reviewers for their valuable comments and suggestions on the earlier version of the manuscript that greatly improved the content and structure of this manuscript.

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  1. Department of Earth Sciences, University of Kashmir, Hazratbal, Srinagar Kashmir, 190006, India

    Reyaz Ahmad Dar, Irfan Rashid, Shakil Ahmad Romshoo & Asif Marazi

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  1. Reyaz Ahmad Dar
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Dar, R.A., Rashid, I., Romshoo, S.A. et al. Sustainability of winter tourism in a changing climate over Kashmir Himalaya. Environ Monit Assess 186, 2549–2562 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10661-013-3559-7

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