A Study on the Mechanism of Large-scale Sediment Disasters in Hindukush Himalayan Watershed and Their Preventive Measures

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This investigative research is related to the mechanism of large-scale landslide and slope failure disasters in Himalayan watersheds and an integrated approach to their prevention. The fields for this study were selected to be disaster management system in Nepal and the landslide zones along major highways in central Nepal. The Himalayan watershed is the most active mountain building zone in the world, which has resulted in formation of steep mountains. For this reason, landslides and related disasters do occur very frequently. The results and findings of this study are supposed to enhance the efforts of landslide disaster mitigation in the Himalayan watersheds.At first, this study attempted to propose an integrated approach to landslide disaster management in Nepal as a developing country and test-implemented it. This involved various activities from disaster education to awareness enhancement. For example, disaster education for school level students and teachers in the form of works … More hops and printed material, disaster seminars for engineers and technicians and networking, disaster related research efforts involving undergraduate and graduate students and networking, media-based disaster awareness raising programs. These programs involved a large number of people from primary school children to general public resulting in a nation-wide human network. School education and media-based (memorandum of understanding has been signed with Nepal's only national TV station Nepal Television to produce and air disaster related programs) disaster awareness raising programs have been highly appreciated by the Government of Nepal. Moreover, the major universities of Nepal have been involved in landslide disaster research for the purpose of establishing a research network, and the Government of Nepal has also been invited to jointly develop a disaster management manual for the use of ordinary people to engineers and technicians. This program is expected to develop further.The main field of investigation was selected to be three major highways in Central Nepal that play the most important role in connecting Nepal and India. These highways pass through the most active trust zone of Nepal and suffer tremendous damage due to landslides and related disasters. So as to understand the mechanism of these failures, first of all hazard mapping of the landslide areas along these highways was done. As a result, a publication in the form of book entitled ‘Landslide Hazard Mapping along Major Highways of Nepal' has been made available. For this publication, the Government of Nepal through the Department of Roads has formally appreciated the efforts of Ehime University and the investigation team in November 2005. All this has highly rated the study results not only from academic but also applicability point of view. Less