South-west monsoon of 2019 advanced towards northern parts of India during the first week of July. Heavy-to-very-heavy rainfall events during July 05-16 resulted in severe flooding over Bihar and Assam and caused huge damage in the form of life and property. More than 90 lakhs people have been affected, and about 100 causalities have been reported in Bihar and Assam due to severe flooding. Results presented in this short communication highlight the importance of space-borne near real-time monitoring of flood events. It is reported that few districts of Assam and Bihar received cumulative rainfall in excess of 1200 mm from multiple heavy rainy events during July 05-16, 2019. Heaviest rainfall events were reported on July 06, 11 and 13. Few districts of Assam and Bihar experienced daily rainfall in excess of 300 to 400 mm during these heavy rainy days with peak hourly rainfall exceeding 50 mm at few synoptic hours. Discharge from Kosi and Brahmaputra rivers combined with heavy cumulative rainfall from multiple rainy episodes during July 05-16 resulted in severe flooding over Assam and Bihar causing losses to life and property.

This study focuses on exploring changes in Land Use and Land Cover (LULC) over Baramulla district of Kashmir using remote sensing and Geographic Information System (GIS). Linkage of LULC with evapotranspiration and precipitation is also explored in this paper. LULC were categorised into dense forest, sparse forest, water body and other classes by using geospatial satellite data from Landsat for the years 1979, 2001 to 2018. The dense forest and water body show decrease in extent from 1979 to 2018. A decrease of about 27 % has been reported from 1979 to 2018 in dense forest. Furthermore, water body shows a reduction of about 36% during the same time span. Significant changes in dense forest and water body affected the water cycle of the region. Reduction in dense forest and water body resulted in significant decrease in evapotranspiration which caused reduction in precipitation over the study area. Reduced precipitation over study area caused conversion from agriculture to horticulture. Increase of about 55% in horticulture has been reported with decrease of about 54% in agriculture over study area. Evapotranspiration from reanalysis shows coherent variation with precipitation from India Meteorological Department (IMD) gridded product. A decadal decrease of about 0.5% in evapotranspiration resulting in decrease of about 0.38% in precipitation over study area is reported. Increased horticulture causes increase in black carbon due to increased biomass which results in increased warming over study area. Changes reported in this study may cause a significant socioeconomic and environmental impact over Baramulla.

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We have examined the land surface changes in the Lidder Valley of Kashmir in the context of socioeconomy, climate and environmental aspect using geoscience technology. It was found that there are large-scale changes in agriculture, horticulture and built-up in the subject area. Records for horticulture, agriculture and built-up were generated from satellite data. A geodatabase of socioeconomic data is examined and corelated with the land system changes. Furthermore, environmental driving factors like precipitation, temperature, snowfall and black carbon (BC) data were used to relate with the changes in LU/LC over the study area. This study reports decrease in agricultural area from 189.73 km2 in 1979 to 77.18 km2 in 2011 while the horticulture is increasing by 3 km2 annually from last three decades. With the increase of about 95% in horticulture, the concentration of BC has also increased. BC is showing a significant decadal increase of 10.5 mg/m2 which is mainly attributed to the biomass burning from horticulture waste. Rainfall, as well as snowfall over the study area, is decreasing by an amount of 2.95 and 15 mm per decade, respectively, and also their pattern is changing. These variations over the study area result in water scarcity forcing people to implement horticulture.

Novel coronavirus “COVID-19” has affected worldwide. At initial stage, the way out to curb the deadly virus was lockdown, isolating the symptomatic people, quarantining travellers and educating the people about the coronavirus infection so that precautionary measures are followed by people. The present research focuses on the application of Geographic Information System on mapping the coronavirus cases in Jammu and Kashmir. The research attributes the role of dense population and urbanization responsible for increasing the coronavirus cases in the study area. The districts like Srinagar and Jammu with high population and urbanization (census 2011) attribute high number of corona cases in year 2020. This high population experiences the highest number of corona cases (Jammu 23,339, Srinagar 24,996), deaths (Jammu 350, Srinagar 444) and COVID-19 recoveries (Jammu 22,141, Srinagar 23,957). The highly urbanized and populated area are much exposed towards infection. The high number of corona case experiences heart-related issues. The number of heart-related deaths are increased to 29.6% during winter in study area by extreme weather conditions limiting regular exercising and outdoor activities. But, due to COVID-19 the amount of heart-related deaths has significantly increased, which is crucial for the study area. This study will serve as replica study for managing COVID-19 in Jammu and Kashmir and help the medical fraternity by giving the priority for vaccinating the people and managing the facility related to COVID-19. The GIS was used to mitigate the infection of COVID-19 on life.