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116 PIONEERING A NEW FUTURE
L-R: Himalayan Geology Seminar, where objectives and guidelines of the institute were prepared, was held in Lucknow in 1965
Trenching across the HFT using paleoseismic investigation
Scanning Electron Microscope facility at the institute
Glacial monitoring at the Zanskar glacier
An exhibition of belongings and field sketches of Prof. DN Wadia at the institute’s museum
Follized skull of Juxia (Perissodatyl) from LyanFormtaion, Ladakh
Landslide and Flood Hazards: WIHG strives to understand how geology of Himalayas and rainfall distribution plays an important role in identifying hotspots of mass wasting. The databank provides landslide mitigation strategies to governments of all Himalayan states and agencies. The institute has played a leading role in treating chronic landslide at Varunavat in Uttarkashi. Landslide hazards zonation has been delineated in Itanagar Capital Complex.
The institute has developed new tools for mapping and understanding large floods and their impact on the landscape of Himalayas, which are vulnerable. The institute played a pivotal role in understanding the devastating 2013 Kedarnath floods under the ‘Mapping the Neighbourhood
in Uttarakhand (MANU)’, a novel initiative of
DST, and helped prepare guidelines on alleviating societal vulnerabilities
during large floods.
SUCCESS STORIES
The institute has a significant place in the national and global community exploring
earth science aspects of the Himalayas. Some success stories are:
Settling the Stratigraphy of the Himalayas: The Lesser Himalayan rock has been a matter of debate amongst the geoscientists wherein its age was considered to be Upper Palaeozoic (~570-500 million years ago). Abundant, index conodont fossils were discovered from the Tal rocks, which fixed the age as Late Precambrian (4600-540 mya) to Cambrian (540-485 mya). And the subsequent discovery of acritarchs and microfossils of Ediacaran age from Infra Krol and Krol put to rest all age controversies. This discovery of an early life not only changed the chronology of rock superposition in the Himalayas, but made a major shift in the global biotic correlations and configuration continental assembly of Gondwanaland.
Subduction, Closing of Neo-Tethys and Evolution of the Himalayas: The discovery of an ultra-high pressure (UHP) polymorph of quartz (SiO2) mineral- coesite by WIHG scientists in high-altitude regions of Ladakh, where the two plates (Indo-Eurasian)
are melded, led to a paradigm shift in the idea about the shallow and low angle subduction process at
the collision zone. This discovery helped to develop a new idea about the deep subduction of Indian plate to mantle depth (90 km-130 km) beneath the