492 high-risk glacial lake sites mapped by IIT Guwahati in Eastern Himalayas

Researchers at IIT Guwahati have identified 492 locations in the Eastern Himalayas where new glacial lakes are likely to form, offering a crucial early warning tool for disaster preparedness in fragile mountain regions.

Researchers at the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Guwahati have developed a new predictive framework that can help identify where glacial lakes are likely to form in the Eastern Himalayan region, offering a crucial tool for disaster preparedness and long-term water management in high-altitude areas.

As climate change accelerates glacier melt across the Himalayas, water from retreating ice is collecting in natural depressions, creating new glacial lakes. These lakes can pose serious risks.

If their natural barriers fail, they can trigger glacial lake outburst floods (GLOFs), sudden floods that can destroy roads, hydropower projects, villages, and ecosystems downstream. Past disasters such as the Kedarnath floods of 2013 and the Uttarkashi floods in August 2025 have shown how devastating such events can be.

While earlier studies mostly focused on climate factors like temperature rise, the IIT Guwahati team took a different approach by closely studying the shape and structure of the land. The researchers found that landscape features play a major role in determining where glacial lakes form.

To do this, the team developed a probabilistic forecasting framework using high-resolution Google Earth images and digital elevation models.

This allowed them to capture complex terrain details such as valleys, bowl-shaped depressions, gentle slopes, and glacier retreat zones, features that strongly influence lake formation.