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Ensuring the availability of drinking and irrigation water for populations living in the mountainous environment has been an important challenge for researchers, spatial planners, and policymakers. A stronger contribution to addressing this challenge may emerge from the identification and mapping of groundwater potential zones in undulating terrain. The present study is an attempt to find out the groundwater potential zones using state-of-the-art technologies of Remote Sensing (RS) and Geographic Information System (GIS) selecting a study area of the Sainj river sub-watershed (area 81 Km²) in Kullu of Himachal Pradesh, India. The associated thematic layers were generated utilizing Landsat-8 (OLI) satellite data from October 2016, Survey of India (SOI) Toposheet (Scale 1:50,000), and Arc GIS 10.5 software. Seven various thematic layers viz., Geology, Soil, Geomorphology, Land Use Land Cover (LULC), Slope, Lineament, and Drainage Density were applied for the identification of groundwater potential zones. The watershed delineation and contour lines (100 m interval) generation were performed using Digital Elevation Model (DEM). The LULC map was prepared through supervised classification using the Support Vector Machine (SVM) method in ENVI (Environmental Visualization Imagine) 5.3 and ERDAS Imagine 2020 (Earth Resource Data Analysis System) softwares. The spatial analyst tool of Arc GIS 10.5 was used to identify groundwater potential zones using the weighted overlay method. The study indicates that the spatial variations in groundwater occurrence are largely controlled by geological structures, landforms, and slopes in the study area. Five groundwater potential zones were identified and mapped in the study area viz. very poor (1.1 Km², 1.36%), poor (7.3 Km², 9.03%), moderate to good (67.2 Km², 83.17%), good (4 Km², 4.95%) and very good (1.2 Km², 1.49%). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present study is an attempt to evaluate the effects of Lockdown due to Coronavirus Disease (COVID-19), on Air Quality Index (AQI) of Kullu valley. The Air Quality was monitoring from January 2019 to June 2019 and same time in the next year during COVID-19 period from January 2019 to June 2019 at Mohal-Kullu sampling site. PM10 and PM2.5 values were recorded in higher average as 80.2±3 μg m-3 and 32.5±1 μg m-3 respectively before the lockdown period. While lowest PM10 and PM2.5 concentration 8.5 μg m-3 and 6.3 μg m-3 respectively was recorded during lockdown period. Similarly, the AQI trend shows the Lowest Index value which is 4.2 during lockdown period in the year of 2020 and highest 25 value was observed before the lockdown period in the year of 2019. The reason behind that all the vehicular and Industrial activities were closed, the effects of which is that the 80% pollution emission has been reduced. Before the lockdown period some observations of particulate pollutants have been crossed the permissible limit (100 μg m-3) prescribed by National Ambient Air Quality Standards (NAAQS). It is also made clear from Hybrid Single-Particle Lagrangian Integrated Trajectory (HYSPLIT) model and Cloud Aerosol Lidar and Infrared Pathfinder Satellite Observation (CALIPSO) analysis that the sources of pollutants are mainly local in nature. AQI study reveals that air quality of Mohal falls under good condition but during lockdown the Air Quality was extremely good. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discuss the need of strategic environmental assessment of hydropower projects in India, to meet the demand and supply of energy. It mentions needs of harnessing hydropower projects in Indian Himalayan Region for maximum economic development. It discusses strategic plan for the future development of hydropower projects.