Abstract:
Lakes are important sources of fresh water in the Himalayan Region. However, during last century, there has been a quantum jump in population without corresponding expansion of civic facilities, which has resulted lakes and reservoirs, especially the urban ones, into sink for contaminants. Consequently, various lakes and reservoirs have suffered from varying degrees of environmental degradation all over the country primarily due to encroachments, eutrophication (from domestic and industrial effluents), and silt.
In this paper, water quality status of selected lakes in Jammu (Mansar, Surinsar), Kashmir (Dal) and Leh & Ladakh regions (Tsokar, Tsomoriri) has been presented. Among these lakes, Dal lake is an urban lake and is under National Lake Conservation Plan, Mansar & Surinsar lakes are fresh water lakes, whereas Tsokar & Tsomoriri lakes belongs to brackish/salt water lakes. Tsomoriri lake is one among the 19 site of Ramsar Convention of international importance in India. The results of physico-chemical parameters have shown that the lakes of Ladakh region have very distinct characteristics of water quality showing very high concentration of pH, EC, TDS, Ca, Mg, Na, K, Cl values. The water quality of these lakes was evaluated for various designated uses.
The eutrophication status in these lakes has been assessed using phosphate data, which showed Mansar, Surinsar and Tsomoriri under eutrophic, Dal and Tsokar lakes under hyper-eutrophic condition. The results of this study indicate that lakes of Himalayan region are no exception for problems of water quality deterioration and increasing level of eutrophication.
