B. R. Adhikari

Tribhuvan University · Department of Civil Engineering

Floods are the most destructive, widespread, and frequent natural hazards. The extent of flood events is accelerating in the context of climate change, where flood management and disaster mitigation remain important long-term issues. Different studies have been utilizing data and images from various types of sensors for mapping, assessment, forecas...

This article summarizes the geotechnical effects of the 25 April 2015 M 7.8 Gorkha, Nepal, earthquake and after-shocks, as documented by a reconnaissance team that undertook a broad engineering and scientific assessment of the damage and collected perishable data for future analysis. Brief descriptions are provided of ground shaking, surface fault...

Traditional and local knowledge (TLK) can be instrumental in mitigating the risks of disasters. There are calls to prioritize such knowledge to promote community resilience against disasters. This study examines the integration of TLK into disaster risk reduction (DRR) policies in Nepal, India and Bangladesh using a qualitative content analysis. We...

Common environmental adsorbents (clay minerals, metal-oxides, metal-oxyhydroxides and organic matter) can significantly impact the chemistry of aqueous fluids via adsorption-desorption reactions. The dissolved chemistry of rivers have routinely been used to quantify silicate mineral dissolution rates, which is a key process for removing carbon diox...

The occurrences of different kinds of natural hazards in the Nepal Himalaya is increasing in recent years. The complex interaction between these hazards is poorly understood. The multi-hazard mapping underscores the pivotal role of hazard maps in disaster risk reduction, advocating for creating a multi-hazard map despite associated challenges in th...

Landslides are geological hazards that typically occur on both temporal and spatial scales in different settings, causing significant loss of life and property. The occurrences of landslides in Nepal are increasing in recent years claiming loss of lives and properties. The coupling effect of Asian monsoon and seismo-tectonic activities along with a...

The 3500 km long Hindu-Kush Himalaya (HKH) region is one of the dynamic regions of the world. Natural and human-induced hazards impose threats to lives and infrastructures in this region. This region has four of the five most crucial yet vulnerable water towers in Asia. The ten major river basins in the HKH have a population of around 1.9 billion i...

The increase in extreme weather frequency complicates debris flow prevention and mitigation. Yet, the relationship between debris flow occurrences and extreme dry-wet cycles remains poorly understood, hindering the development of a more accurate debris flow early warning system. Based on the debris flow inventory (1981-2021) in the subtropical mons...

Mass movements play an important role in landscape evolution of high mountain areas such as the Himalayas. Yet, establishing numerical age control and reconstructing transport dynamics of past events is challenging. To fill this research gap, we bring luminescence dating to the test in an extremely challenging environment: the Pokhara Valley in Nep...

Large earthquakes can contribute to mountain growth by building topography but also contribute to mass removal from mountain ranges through widespread mass wasting. On annual to decadal or centennial timescales, large earthquakes also have the potential to significantly alter fluvial sediment dynamics if a significant volume of the sediment generat...

Mass movements play an important role in landscape evolution of high mountain areas such as the Himalayas. Yet, establishing numerical age control and reconstructing transport dynamics of past events is challenging. To fill this research gap, we bring Optically Stimulated Luminescence (OSL) dating to the test in an extremely challenging environment...

The application of movement-detection sensors is crucial for understanding surface movement and tectonic activities. The development of modern sensors has been instrumental in earthquake monitoring, prediction, early warning, emergency commanding and communication, search and rescue, and life detection. There are numerous sensors currently being ut...

Abstract The Nepal Himalayas is one of the world’s most active mountain belts and home to widespread natural hazards of various types, including landslides, which claim numerous lives and result in massive property damage in the country. Landslides occur due to the combined effects of seismic activity, monsoon rainfall, and improper land-use pract...

The application of movement-detection sensors is crucial for understanding surface movement and tectonic activities. The development of modern sensors has been instrumental in earthquake monitoring, prediction, early warning, emergency commanding and communication, search and rescue, and life detection. There are numerous sensors currently being ut...

Dear Turkish friends, We are very saddened that your relatives or friends were unfortunately injured or lost their lives in the latest 7.8 magnitude earthquake that struck the Southeastern part of your country and neighboring Syria in the northwestern on February 6th, 2023. You might also have been affected either physically or mentally. We share t...

Large earthquakes can contribute to mountain growth by building topography, but also contribute to mass removal from mountain ranges through widespread mass wasting. On annual to decadal timescales, large earthquakes also have the potential to significantly alter fluvial sediment dynamics if a significant volume of the sediment generated reaches th...

South Asian Region (SAR) is not only home to about 25% of the global population but also the site of many disasters, making it one of the most disaster-prone regions on the planet. The vulnerability of most of the population in the SAR can be due to the poor critical infrastructure in the region. The network of essential infrastructures like power...

The need to protect forests and enhance the capacity of mountain ecosystems is highlighted in the U.N.’s Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 15. The worst-hit areas of the 2008 Wenchuan Earthquake in southwest China were mountainous regions with high biodiversity and the impacted area is typical of other montane regions, with the need for detecting...

Nepal has been experiencing different kinds of natural hazards in recent decades due to its unique topographic and climatic diversities. Earthquakes, landslides, floods, lightning, fire, cold and heat wave are major hazards. Among them, the landslide is one of the major natural hazards, and the occurrence of landslides is due to active tectonics an...

The Nepalese Himalayas is one of the world’s most active mountain belts, with widespread natural hazards of various types, including landslides, which claim numerous lives and properties in Nepal. Landslides occur due to the combined effects of seismic activity, monsoon rainfall, and improper land-use practices. The prevention and mitigation of lan...

Cascading hazards are becoming more prevalent in the central Himalayas. Primary hazards (e.g., earthquakes, avalanches, and landslides) often trigger secondary hazards (e.g., landslide dam, debris flow, and flooding), compounding the risks to human settlements, infrastructures, and ecosystems. Risk management strategies are commonly tailored to a s...

The study of land use and land cover (LULC) changes has become a key index in identifying and understanding the patterns of urbanization, land use changes and their contribution to the exposure and distributions of hazards. The increasing urbanization has resulted in the acquisition of a large area of forest and cultivable land, thereby converting...

Nepal Himalaya is one of the seismically active mountain belts in the world with several kilometers of relief and very prone to catastrophic mass failure. The collision between Indian and Eurasian plates resulted in numerous tectonic faults and highly deformed rocks, which are responsible for triggering many earthquakes of different scales. High gr...

This book presents the select proceedings of the Virtual Conference on Disaster Risk Reduction (VCDRR 2021). This book discusses various relevant topics such as Disaster resilience and Infrastructure, Risk reduction and structural measures, Evidence based approach for DRR Case studies, Numerical modelling and Constructions methods, Prevention Metho...

The Nepal Himalayas lies in the central part of the Himalayan arc. The range is a product of the collision between Indian and Eurasian plates in the Miocene period (50 M yr) and is bounded by Indus Tsangpo Suture Zone (ITSZ) to the north and the Ganga basin to the south. The coupling effect of earthquake reoccurrences and strong Asian monsoon has r...

The land is one of the major components of the Earth’s surface. Land with anthropogenic activities and interaction is known as land use and land with natural status is recognized as land cover. This chapter deals with the overall land use and land cover (LULC) pattern of Nepal, with the changing trends of major LULC types. Further, it also covers a...

Ecosystem-based Adaptation (EbA) has been gaining attention in science, policy and practice as an effective way to address climate change and contribute to sustainable development. In Hindu Kush Himalaya (HKH), EbAs are implemented to enhance resilience of mountain communities to the harsh realities of climate change. However, very little documenta...

The occurrence of landslides in the Nepal Himalaya is a common phenomenon due to active seismotectonics coupled with the strong monsoon, fragile landscape, and inadequate agricultural practices. This research has analyzed the trends of landslide events, total fatalities, and economic losses from 1971 to 2016 and discussed the landslide early warnin...

The lightning hazard is one of the devastating hazards in Nepal due to a large amount of atmospheric water vapor coming from the Indian Ocean and a large orographic lifting of this moist air. In 2019, a total of 2884 people were affected with loss of 110982 USD and the fatality was highest (94) in reported lightning events in reported lightning eve...

Landslide hazard along China-Nepal road corridors in the Kali Gandaki valley is one of the major natural hazards. In this research, the random forest method was used to calculate the landslide sensitivity index (LSI) of settlements along the Kali Gandaki valley and identify the landslide susceptible area. The results show that the AUC of random for...

The Thakkhola Graben, a north-south graben, lies in central Nepal Himalayas consisting of Neogene sediments. The presence of pollens in these sediments provides a unique natural laboratory to understand the paleoenvironment during the formation of the graben. This study provides a detailed description of the pollen collected from the Tetang and Tha...

The Thakkhola-Mustang Graben represents the Cenozoic extensional tectonic phase of the Tibetan Plateau and the whole Himalaya lies at the northern side of the Dhaulagiri and Annapurna Ranges and south of the Yarlung Tsangpo Suture Zone. More than 850 m thick graben sediments are stratigraphically divided into five formations, namely the Tetang Form...

Landslide is one of the major natural disaster for rural communities in Nepalese Himalaya which takes huge number of lives destructing infrastructures and livelihood systems. Increasing population and rural-urban migration with unmanaged settlement in recent years are influencing factors for big loss of life and property every year. To address this...

Following a disaster, the majority of families rebuild their homes themselves. In this paper, we consider how the physical environment influences such ‘self-recovery’ by investigating disasters in the Philippines (typhoons Haiyan in 2013 and Haima in 2016) and Nepal (the 2015 Gorkha earthquake). Despite the many differences in the disaster contexts...

The Himalayan Range is generally classified into a number of broad longitudinal tectonic belts. Despite a long history of investigation, some fundamental issues of their stratigraphy and structure are still unresolved. Especially, there has been considerable controversy over delineating the Greater Himalayan and Lesser Himalayan belts of Nepal. The...

Debris flow susceptibility mapping is considered to be useful for hazard prevention and mitigation. As a frequent debris flow area, many hazardous events have occurred annually and caused a lot of damage in the Sichuan Province, China. Therefore, this study attempted to evaluate and compare the performance of four state-of-the-art machine-learning...

In the central Nepal Himalaya, landslides form the major natural hazards annually resulting in many casualties and damage. Structural as well as non-structural measures are in place to minimize the risk of landslide hazard. To reduce the landslide risk, a Landslide Early Warning System (LEWS) as a non-structural measure has been piloted at Sundrawa...

Soil degradation is a severe and growing threat to ecosystem services globally. Soil loss is often nonlinear, involving a rapid deterioration from a stable eco‐geomorphic state once a tipping point is reached. Soil loss thresholds have been studied at plot scale, but for landscapes, quantitative constraints on the necessary and sufficient condition...

Soil degradation is a severe and growing threat to ecosystem services globally. Soil loss is often nonlinear, involving a rapid deterioration from a stable eco-geomorphic state once a tipping point is reached. Soil loss thresholds have been studied at plot scale, but for landscapes, quantitative constraints on the necessary and sufficient condition...

The 2015 Gorkha earthquake (Mw = 7.8) caused significant earthquake triggered landslides (ETL) in a landscape that is heavily intervened by rainfall triggered landslides (RTL). China's Belt and Road Initiative plan to boost South-Asian regional trade and mobility through two key highway corridors, i.e. 1) Longmu-Rasuwa-Kathmandu (LRK) and 2) Nyalam...

The drainage network characteristics of watershed has a significant impact on mountain landscape. The Kali Gandaki River basin has various topographic variation with geomorphology to be crossed by the Sino-Nepal road corridor. In this research, the ALOS PRISM data is used to extract the watershed DEM, and then the drainage network is automatically...

The interaction between scientists and community is always challenging because of having different ways of analysis of the events. The fundamental issue is that most of the academic researchers are working independently and often failed to discuss with community in public forum. In such case, communities are not aware or do not understand the very...

The civilization of Kathmandu Valley has started alongside the holy Bagmati River. However, rapid urban expansion and overpopulation have resulted not only in water shortage but ended up polluting the same water body based on which the settlements had grown, a classic example can be taken as that of Kathmandu and other surrounding cities in Kathman...

The number of deaths from landslides in Nepal has been increasing dramatically due to a complex combination of earthquakes, climate change, and an explosion of informal road construction that destabilizes slopes during the rainy season. This trend will likely rise as development continues, especially as China's Belt and Road Initiative seeks to con...

A sudden outburst of erosion Glacial lake outburst floods (GLOFs) are exactly what they sound like. The sudden emptying of a glacial lake in high-topography regions like the Himalaya can quickly destroy everything in its path. Cook et al. intercepted a GLOF in the Bhotekoshi and Sunkoshi river valleys in central Nepal as they were monitoring the re...

Mountain rivers respond to strong earthquakes by rapidly aggrading to accommodate excess sediment delivered by co‐seismic landslides. Detailed sediment budgets indicate that rivers need several years to decades to recover from seismic disturbances, depending on how recovery is defined. We examine three principal proxies of river recovery after eart...

Pokhara city (800 m), the second largest city of Nepal, lies in the midlands hills. It is built on an exceptionally broad, flat plain located at the foot of the Annapurna Range (>8000 m). It is a very attractive place for tourists, since it offers a wide variety of interests (lakes, caves, gorges, scenic glaciated mountains) related to its geomorph...

Landslides are common in the hills of Nepal where the terrain slopes are steep and consist of fragile geo-morphology. In Nepal the causal and triggering factors of the landslides are respectively the underlying geology and rainfall is highly recognized, which is however less known and limited in study. Establishment of rainfall threshold for landsl...

p>Every year, flood impose substantial economic, social and environmental cost on Nepalese community through direct damage to residential, commercial, educational and structures. Moreover, the flood destroys animal farm, commercial stock and records and other content of the building and pollutes the water. Early Warning Systems are important to sav...

The number of deaths from landslides in Nepal has been increasing dramatically due to a complex combination of earthquakes, climate change, and an explosion of road construction. We compare the distribution of landslides in Sindhupalchok district before the 2015 Gorkha Earthquake with those generated by the earthquake to demonstrate that landslides...

Uncertain timing and magnitudes of past mega-earthquakes continue to confound seismic risk appraisals in the Himalayas. Telltale traces of surface ruptures are rare, while fault trenches document several events at best, so that additional proxies of strong ground motion are needed to complement the paleoseismological record. We study Nepal's Pokhar...

Open image in new windowPapers accepted in Session 2.4—Landslide Hazard, Risk Assessment and Prediction of the Fourth World Landslide Forum are pertinent to the advances in landslide science ranging from remote sensing to landslide forecasting and the validation of the landslide. Different case studies from Asia, Europe and other parts of the world...

The Gorkha earthquake of 2015 had significant impact on the private sector in Nepal. The study takes a mixed approach to considers recovery process of manufacturing sector in Kathmandu valley and how is the impact on the resilience based on the Sendai framework of action for disaster risk reduction. The findings suggest three areas of importance fo...

This paper presents the results of an extensive mapping of co-seismic landslides triggered by the 2015 Gorkha earthquake in central Nepal. More than 19,332 landslides have been identified covering 61.5 km2 of land in about 20,500 km2 area of investigation using Google Earth imagery. Their spatial distribution characteristics and relation to the tri...

p class="Default"> Abstract: Nepal Himalaya is one of the most active mountain belts with several kilometers of relief which is very prone to catastrophic mass failure and this region encounter the problem of landslide almost every year during monsoon period causing large scale of devastation. Most of the landslides are caused by river bank erosion...

Global warming leading to climate change is a rapidly growing global threat to humanity and environment of the world. The present research in the Langtang Valley, Central Nepal attempts to find out the impact of climate change on glacier retreat and local community based on the studies of available long-term hydrological-meteorological data, satell...

The 2015 magnitude 7.8 Gorkha earthquake and its aftershocks weakened mountain slopes in Nepal. Co- and postseismic landsliding and the formation of landslide-dammed lakes along steeply dissected valleys were widespread, among them a landslide that dammed the Kali Gandaki River. Overtopping of the landslide dam resulted in a flash flood downstream,...