Environmental Degradation in Topical Mountainous Region due to Population Pressure: A Case of Darjeeling Himalaya, India

In the long history of human civilization man has changed the natural environment of the earth as step by step. Recently it enhanced by the technologically developed modern mankind. Population pressure may be the direct causes of environmental degradation in the fragile landscape. High rainfall affected tropical mountainous region of the world are most sensitive to environmental problem due to extreme and unplanned growth. Agriculture, construction and other economic activities triggered mass movement, soil erosion and other related problem in these regions. The present paper highlights the environmental problems of Darjeeling Himalaya by increasing population pressure, consequence with their activities; in the perspective of landslide and soil erosion. Census data of different decades have been used to analyses the population growth, whether satellite imageries used to analyses spatial and temporal dimension of hazard. The result shows that most of the landslides occur in the human modification landscape or near the construction sites. So it is clearly pointed out that anthropogenic activities are responsible for the above problems.