Snow Cover Assessment and Delineation of Hunza River Basin Using Snow Tool & ArcGIS and Correlating with Climatic Normals. (2003 to 2011)

Abstract

Pakistan is an arid to semi-arid country with rainfall contributing only - 10% to agriculture. Agriculture of Pakistan thus depends on irrigation system constituted by a gigantic chain of hydraulic structure. Pakistan is largely dependent on its frozen hydrological resources, i.e., snow cover and glaciated ice on the mountains of Northern Pakistan. In mountain areas, where snow melt runoff often makes up a large part of river discharge, the cryosphere is a key source of water. In contrast to Global warming, the Karakoram Region is having a positive mass balance after the late 20th century. Due to higher rate pfprecipitation at elevation regimes, the ice cover is increasing as contrast to melting snow caps over the world. This is termed as the 'Karakoram Anomaly' (Hewitt,2005). Snow cover assessment and Hunza river basin catchment delineation was carried out in research and the results are contrary to the Karakoram Anomaly as snow cover is decreasing from 2003-20 II .Further relation was made with rainfall and temperature and it was concluded that mean temperature is of inverse to the snow cover with no relation to rainfall.