2,000-year-old Buddhist site in Kashmir faces “high risk of collapse by 2050”: study

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Discovered following photographs found in a French museum archive in 2025, the 2,000-year-old Zehanpora Buddhist complex in north Kashmir’s Baramulla district faces “a high risk of collapse within the next three decades”, according to a study by experts.

Predicting future erosion possibilities, the study estimates that 10,122 square metres “could be lost by 2050 without undertaking any preventive interventions”. The study has been undertaken by experts Bilal Hassan, Mohammad Ajmal Shah, and Mumtaz A. Yatoo, from the Centre of Central Asian Studies, University of Kashmir, Srinagar, and has been published in the Ancient Asia journal in July this year.

It studied soil erosion at the Buddhist archaeological site located on the Jhelum River bank in Baramulla by using Remote Sensing (RS) and GIS. “Analysing Landsat and Google Earth imagery (1976-2022), we quantified cumulative spatial changes relative to the 1976 baseline channel area. The reach experienced significant lateral land erosion (32.5%) alongside massive fluvial deposition (71.6%), culminating in a net channel expansion of 39.1% driven by aggressive meander migration,” it said.

The study noted that the highest erosion recorded was between 1989-2000, of about 3,616 square metres per year, and based its warning about the likely threat to the site by 2050.