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Landslides cause major loss of human lives and livelihoods; the destruction of economic and social infrastructure, as well as environmental damages. Disasters have a significant negative impact on agriculture land by depleting soil health leading to reduced crop productivity. This study aims to evaluate the impact of the massive Attabad landslide on soil physico-chemical parameters in upper Hunza, in northern Pakistan. The investigated soil properties were pH, Soil Organic Carbon (SOC), Nitrate-Nitrogen (NO3-N) Electrical Conductivity (EC), Available Phosphorus (P), exchangeable Potassium (K), silt, sand, and clay content. Soil samples were randomly collected from both the disturbed and undisturbed soil at the depth of 0-15cm. The independent T test revealed significant differences in the soil properties due to landslide effect. SOC and NO3-N were significantly higher (p=0.002 and 0.05) in landslide unaffected compared to affected soil. Similarly soil texture also changed significantly as a result of the landslide, as sand dominate in affected and loam in unaffected soils. The changes in soil texture and physico-chemical properties seem to have direct and indirect effects on soil fertility, ultimately deteriorating the soil health. Therefore, this study suggests that whenever a soil survey is conducted in a mountainous landscape, the land sliding effect must be considered along with other environmental attributes to gain a better understanding of soil properties. Future studies must be done to evaluate the patterns of the restoration of soil properties in landslide affected areas to understand and improve the soil health for better crop production and improved livelihood of disaster-affected mountain communities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyses and assesses how existing policies and approaches in South Asia consider long-term climate change adaptation. Presently, it is unclear what approaches are used in the existing policies to cope with the future climatic changes. Our research framework consists of two components. First, we identify and define key characteristics of adaptation policy approaches based on a review of scientific journal articles. The key characteristics identified are institutional flexibility, adaptive nature, scalability and reflexivity. Second, we analyse the presence of these characteristics in the climate change adaptation policies of Bangladesh, India, Nepal, and Pakistan. Our findings show that the four South Asian countries contribute to only 8% of the total journal articles on adaptation policy, with least papers representing Pakistan and Nepal. Reviewing the adaptation policies, we find that except for the Climate Change Policy of Nepal, none of the policies discusses transboundary scale adaptation approaches. The identified adaptation policies lack focus on shared transboundary resources between the countries, and instead focus at national or sub-national scale. This is reflected by relatively low scores for the scalability characteristic. All the countries show high scores for institutional flexibility, suggesting that changing roles and responsibilities between government agencies for adaptation planning and implementation is accepted in the four countries. We conclude that to prevent a loss of flexibility and to promote scalability of shared transboundary resources, policy approaches such as anticipatory governance, robust decision-making, and adaptation pathways can be useful for long-term climate change adaptation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]