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Risk of Yarlung Tsangpo landslide dams bursting growing: Expert

By STAFF REPORTER

GUWAHATI, Feb 7 - As the rainy season is drawing closer in this part of the globe, the risk of bursting of the landslide dams on the Yarlung Tsangpo is growing. These dams can burst at any moment, warned Chinton Sheth of the National Centre for Biological Sciences, Bengaluru.

Sheth has been studying the developments on the Yarlung Tsangpo following the November, 2017 earthquake, which resulted in the formation of three landslide dams on this river, known as Siang in Arunachal Pradesh, the major contributor to the Brahmaputra in Assam. Satellite imagery by NASA and planet.com shows that landslides of this size and danger level have not occurred on the Siang river for almost half a century.

In a write-up (�Risk of devastating floods lurks over the Siang�) published in The Arunachal Times in its today�s edition, Sheth maintained that it is a critical time for India and China to work together for a humanitarian cause. Immediate activation of the Disasters Charter for Humanity adopted at the 1999 Third United Nations Conference on Exploration and Peaceful Uses of Outer Space, bilateral meetings and deployment of operations to safely drain the dams will be a timely call that can prevent loss of lives and property of the people living in the downstream areas, he asserted.

Sheth informed that the UN charter, which is an international collaboration between owners and operators of Earth observation satellite missions, was started to aid humanitarian rescue authorities in the event of a natural or man-made disaster. The Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) represented India and was the fourth agency to sign the charter in 2001.

The charter provides free access to maps and processed satellite images at fine scales for areas that have been devastated. India and China have direct access to the charter, he said.

In this respect, he has referred to the assessment made by Dr Jeffrey Kargel, a leading glacier expert of the University of Arizona, of the volume of water in one of the Yarlung Tsangpo dams. Prof Kargel has been quoted by Sheth as maintaining, �There is still some uncertainty about the volume of the lakes, but my rough estimate of about 19 million cubic metres for just one of the lakes means that one lake draining into the next could create conditions for a very sudden release of water, meaning very high peak discharge.�

Sheth then observed that the above assessment of Prof Kargel should be taken as an alert to immediately prepare for an imminent disaster along the Siang river in Arunachal Pradesh and Assam.

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