Excelsior Correspondent
LEH, June 26: On third day of the international conference on “Sustainable Resource Development in the Himalaya” two Technical sessions were conducted and chaired by Professor Peter Sammonds, University College London and Mr Kotwal.
Dr Tim Wright of Leeds University made presentation on Active Deformation and Seismic Hazard in the India-Asia collision zone. Dr B K Bansal, Advisor and Head Seismology Division, MoES Government of India made a presentation on Seismic Hazard Assessment in India: Current status and future plans.
Dr Susanne Seargent of British Geological Survey made a presentation on the role of science and scientists in earthquake risk reduction and David Shilston, past President of Geological Society of London, an engineering Geologist, gave a presentation of LUSI: the geology, engineering and impact of mud volcano disaster and highlighted the remedial measure citing different examples from historical records.
Ang Rita Sherpa, Mountain Institute Kathmandu, Nepal, gave a presentation of expeditions to the Mt Everest and the tourism opportunities associated with the Mt. expeditions. He emphasized the role of the Governments of the Himalayan countries to maintain expedition tourism in the Himalaya in a sustainable manner.
In the discussion session various issues related to the Himalayan seismic arc were discussed and the experts from abroad and Dr Bansal responded to various questions including the prediction by Roger Bilham about magnitude 9 earthquake in the Kashmir region. The experts ruled out the possibility of occurrence of the magnitude 9 earthquake in the region, however, they maintained that the region is a high risk zone but earthquake predictions at the moment are not possible.
The region is monitored by a network of broadband seismic observatories through Jammu University and the data is being made available through national network at Hyderabad and AMD New Delhi for the researchers in India and abroad.
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