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Geological Survey of India (GSI), a subordinate organisation of the Department of Mines, has completed 150 years of service to the nation in 2001. Besides augmenting the mineral inventory through extensive survey and exploration, it has recently taken up specialized investigations on earthquake geology, environmental studies and glaciological studies.
GSI has generated data on glacier mass balance, flow hydrometric and secular movement of the Himalayan Glacier since 1978. GSI has also carried out recession studies of 30 glaciers and observed that almost all glaciers are passing through a phase recession. It took up 34 geo-environmental investigations comprising geo-environmental appraisal, geo-environmental impact assessment and studies on natural hazards and geomorphic processes covering public health and landslide issues. In addition 31 items of Syn-Exploration Baseline Data Generation were also taken up.
38 items of Geotechnical and engineering geological studies have been undertaken for effective planning and execution of civil engineering projects for water resource management/ development and creation of communication network, transport and other infrastructure facilities in different parts of the country.
Earthquake related studies like active fault mapping and seismic micro-zonation of urban complexes in different regions of the country coupled with routine post-earthquake macro-seismic, and geophysical surveys, seismotectonic analyses of tremor parameters constituted one of the major thrust areas of activity of GSI. It has updated the all India earthquake database up to the year 2000 and a total of 16136 events are now registered. Active fault zones have been delineated in two selected sectors of the eastern Himalayan foreland using multi-sensor image fusion.
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