High-Level Project Summary
We created an online resource gateway that offers visual and non-visual data about the glaciers in Pamir region of Tajikistan and Northern Pakistan. Using remote sensing and Geographic informatic systems, we have monitored and modeled the treating trend of Batura glacier in Northern Pakistan and Fedchenku glacier in Pamir region for the last 2 decades. We are also creating a historical record of the environmental catastrophes caused by glacier melting in the regions and how that have impacted the communities. The project bridges the gap of the disproportional growth of glacial outburst events in mountain regions and the lack of data and information to monitor the glacier treating behavior.
Link to Final Project
Link to Project "Demo"
Detailed Project Description
This is how our website functions:
•first you will be redirected to our home page
•in the head of our homepage, you will see six headers and each of them have different function in the website.
•The 1st header is Home. It is basically used for navigation
•The 2nd header is about us, which gives information about aims, and goals, and Who we are
•The 3rd header is glaciers which is significant because it is further categorized into different locations. And within these locations, users can find different glaciers according to their geo location
•The 4th header is News & Stories. In this page users will see all the recent news and stories connected to glaciers that are in Himalayan mountains range
•The 5th part is trainings which leads user to the training from NASA and other organizations. The trainings are mainly about remote sensing and how to use earth observations to predict or analyze climate change. These trainings can be both for professionals of all levels and policy makers
•The 6th header is discussion part which enable users to discuss trending topics about glaciers and can interact with other people who are interested in the same topic
Furthermore, we have used some other functionalities in our website such as translator. As most of the Central Asian people do not understand English for them. we have given a function of translating the content to Russian language.
In addition, we have used WP automatic plug-in which has a huge database of searching targeted key word. In our case it is glacier, and it searches and automatically posts the trending content about glaciers in our news section. This will help people and policy makers to be aware of all the recent and trending news about glaciers.
It is made in WordPress using the PHP, MYSQL, and we have used the Google Engine to extract maps timelines as well and embedded it. It used the GoSolar theme of WordPress. The benefits of the website is that it is user friendly, easy to navigate and find content. It also serve as all in one site that gives various function a single platform like Glaciers data, Information, various stories, discussing topics, and also doing trainings. We also have used WordPress plugins as follow in our website:
1.Discussion Board: To create a discussion and a interactive forum for users to post on trending topics.
2.Gosolarthemes Core: Use to Develop the Core structure of theme
3.Happyforms (free): To create various forms
4.Loco Translate: To translate the content into Russian.
5.MetaSlider: To create different Slides of Photos
6.Slider Revolution: To create the Meta Slides
7.Wordpress Automatic Plugin: To Create automatic post related to Glaciers news and stories.
8.Wp File Manager: To Upload and edit different files and folders.
9.WPBakaery Page Builder: To edit page.
Space Agency Data
NASA Earth Observatory
Google Earth Engine
European Space Agency
Hackathon Journey
Space Apps experience was an eye-opening and learning journey for us. We, as a team, has learnt about the vulnerability of our regions to climate change and growing climatic catastrophic events. All of our team members come from mountains region, some from northern part of Pakistan while other from Pamir regions. We have witnessed numerous extreme climate conditions and events especially flooding sweeping away our communities. Our people and civilizations are amongst the communities at the highest risk of climate change and global warming. The recent deadly floods are one of the examples which motivated our Pakistani team members to aggressively anticipate towards the challenge. We want to play our role as a responsible citizen to address the glacier melting-triggered hazards to preserve our lands and people from vanishing. We faced many challenging finding the raw data as there is not much research or field survey done on the glaciers of our target regions. However, we reached out to different local organizations and agencies working in these regions to access data. Overall, we completely our project successfully and we learnt about team work, collaborative learning, research and many more important lessons and skills.
References
Aaquib Javed, P. K. (2022). Does the Recent Revival of Western Disturbances Govern the Karakoram Anomaly? American Metrological Society, 4383–4402.
European Space Agency. (2022, 02 04). Retrieved from Earth From Space: Batura Glacier : https://www.esa.int/Applications/Observing_the_Earth/Copernicus/Earth_from_Space_Batura_Glacier
European Space Agency. (2022, 02 04). Retrieved from Earth From Space: Batura Glacier : https://www.esa.int/Applications/Observing_the_Earth/Copernicus/Earth_from_Space_Batura_Glacier
Thenews.com.pk. 2022. Hunza, Gilgit disconnected after glacial lake flooding. [online] Available at: <https://www.thenews.com.pk/print/956134-hunza-gilgit-disconnected-after-glacial-lake-flooding> [Accessed 2 October 2022].
Siddiqui, I., 2022. Shishper Glacier's outburst sweeps away a bridge in the Hassanabad area of Hunza. [online] DAWN.COM. Available at: <https://www.dawn.com/news/1688466> [Accessed 2 October 2022].
https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/images/78967/fedchenko-glacier
https://reliefweb.int/map/tajikistan/tajikistan-debris-flow-map-barsem-village-suchan-jamoat-shughnan-district-18-july
https://earthengine.google.com/
photos of Arnaud Ceiseman, 2022
IOM UN Migration, 2015. Ice melt triggers Tajikistan flooding, displacement. Retrieved from
Ice Melt Triggers Tajikistan Flooding, Displacement | International Organization for Migration (iom.int)
The Barsem Disaster, 2016. Retrieved from:
https://www.ndr.ch/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/Barsem.pdf
Tags
#cool #climatechange #savethehimalayans