Letters in Economic Research Updates
Applicability of Geospatial Tools for Long-Term Sediment Deposit Analysis and Identification of Paleo-Channels. A Case Study of Ganga River Basin. Bihar, India
Abstract
Neeraj Kumar, Deepak Lal, Arpan Sheering, Ajaz Ahmad, Mukesh Kumar, Vivekanand Rawat, Akash Anand, Shakti Suryavanshi and Saroj Kumar
The river Ganga and its tributaries are important water resources for North India. It has its own ecosystem and also creates a unique biodiversity around its vicinity. It has been found that huge sediment deposits take place in the River Ganga basin from past few decades. The flow area of many rivers is reducing continuously. During the flood, it inundates the large agriculture and urban areas. It caused a huge economic loss along with human death & displacement. The organisation involved in the flood management and related works are facing the difficulties in long term planning and development of mitigation strategies such as river dragging, river training works, flood & disasters management etc. The evidence of sediment deposition is highly required in the public domain to use in overall project development for this basin. Therefore, a study was conducted to estimate the sediment deposit rate and its areas of the basin. Various scientific methods, such as satellite imagery interpretation, digitization, modelling techniques have been used. The result obtained by the study indicates the continuous rise in sediment deposition in the river basin. The detail of the sediment deposit rate, area and locations of the river Gandak, Budhi Gandak, Bagmati, Kamla Balan, Kosi and Mahananda along with the methodology are provided in this manuscript. The methodology developed in the study are tested and reliable for the application on another river basin too.