Sustainable management of water resources involves reserve upholding, proficient utilization, and eminence management. Although, activities relating to quantity appraisal and management in terms of river discharge and water resources planning are given attention at the basin level, water quality assessment are still being done at specific locations of major concern. The greatest compensation of using remote sensing data for hydrological investigations and monitoring is its ability to generate information in spatial and temporal domain, which is very crucial for booming scrutiny. The GIS technology provides suitable alternatives for proficient supervision of large and intricate databases. Information from satellites is becoming more and more important for natural resources management and research.

Uttarakhand is one of the hilly states in the Indian Himalaya. It lies in the Northern part of India between the latitudes 28 0 -31 0 N to longitudes 77 0 -81 0 E having a maximum dimension of eastwest 310 km and 255 km; north -south covering an area of 53,484 km 2 with the elevation ranging from 210 to 7817 msl. It is the home to many holy rivers originating from the nearly 1439 glaciers. In view of the changing climate followed by factors responsible for varying nature of climate and its effect on environment basically related to vegetation phenology, biodiversity as well water resources especially in mountain region of Uttarakhand Himalaya which is well known for its rich biodiversity in perspective of socio-economic well-being of the rural people and forest dwellers; the natural devastation or any kind of calamity affect the native of the region due to their dependencies in the services provided by the nature which we call ecosystem services. The devastation caused during 16 th & 17 th June 2013 in Kedarnath valley on Kedargad micro watershed, of Mandakini sub watershed in Mandakini valley of Rudraprayag district, Uttarakhand Himalaya is one of the major devastations that have ruined the climate and ecosystem of the area to a greater extent. In the present study it is studied that how this devastation has affected vegetation by perturbing ecosystem services. It was noticed that after devastation forests and alpine is major region where a remarkable change was detected. A major change in river is also noticed.

No abstract

<p><strong>Abstract.</strong> Landslides are one of the frequently happening disasters in this hilly state of Uttarakhand which accounts to the loss of lives and property every year especially during the rainy season which lead to affect the families. With the development of satellite observation technique, advanced data analysis tool and new modeling techniques landslide hazard zonation map can be prepared.</p><p>In the present study, Landslide Hazard Zonation (LHZ) for Kedarnath to Augustmuni region of Rudraprayag district of Uttarakhand state was carried out using Remote Sensing and GIS technique. For the preparation of LHZ map, year 2010 high resolution satellite data have been used. After preprocessing of the data various thematic layers are prepared in GIS environment. The weighted-rating system technique were used for the LHZ map showing the five zones, namely “very low hazard”, “low hazard”, “moderate hazard”, “high hazard” and “very high hazard” . This map has been validated after the tragedy of Kedarnath in Uttarakhand, Total no. of 224 Landslides has been marked from Kedarnath to Augustmuni region just after the kedarnath tragedy in year 2013. When this landslides thematic layer is overlaid on LHZ, the study shows that approximately 50% landslides was there where in LHZ map high and very high hazard zones have been identified. After the tragedy our team workers have gone to the field, with the help of DGPS around 40 ground control points have been taken to validate our result. So by using this geospatial technique around 50% people’s life can be saved.</p>