PLIGHT FOR INHABITANTS
A study by WWF named VOICES OF CHANGE interviewed many people from Sundarbans and Laddakh regarding changes they have observed during their life time in their surroundings and climate.
In Sundarbans, the most common and generalised problem was the erosion of the islands foot by foot as they are pushed more in land to prevent their fields from infertility bestowed by sea water that too for many coming years .
Few older chaps from the community recalls with fear in their eyes those horrible when their homes been swept away by sea waters, instead of having embankments with good enough height.
REASON : In early days , these embankments used to be entangled with the vegetation around them(mangroves) which gave support to them , which today as a result of habitat degradation and deforestation by the people themselves for preparing agricultural fields are completely gone and these naked embankments are as week as deck of cards and standing just for name sake.
In the recent years many new embankments have been made after repeated collapsing but because of lack of that man groove vegetative support , people are erecting them to collapse once more.
A NEW STUDY GIVING STARTLING RESULTS
Queen’s University, Belfast, and Institute of Environment Studies & Wetland Management (IESWM) researchers are going to give a new dimension to the climate related concerns in sundarbans.
They postulate that uninhabited islands are higher in level than inhabited islands. They support this fact by the observation that in inhabited islands the embankments prevent the sea waters form coming in and hence their is no new sedimentation over the islands where as in uninhabited islands they are abundant CREEKS and no restrictive embankments so facilitating sedimentation.
Now this study group is planing to take on radiocarbon study of sediments deep in soil to find out the rate of sedimentation and then comparing it to rate of rise in sea level to find out that is this sedimentation really competing with the sea level rise and thereby have prevented the uninhabited islands from inundation and submerging .
If this goes in favor the hypothesis then the researchers would go upto advice that we can depopulate the islands to help them survive the rising sea level.
A study by WWF named VOICES OF CHANGE interviewed many people from Sundarbans and Laddakh regarding changes they have observed during their life time in their surroundings and climate.
In Sundarbans, the most common and generalised problem was the erosion of the islands foot by foot as they are pushed more in land to prevent their fields from infertility bestowed by sea water that too for many coming years .
Few older chaps from the community recalls with fear in their eyes those horrible when their homes been swept away by sea waters, instead of having embankments with good enough height.
REASON : In early days , these embankments used to be entangled with the vegetation around them(mangroves) which gave support to them , which today as a result of habitat degradation and deforestation by the people themselves for preparing agricultural fields are completely gone and these naked embankments are as week as deck of cards and standing just for name sake.
In the recent years many new embankments have been made after repeated collapsing but because of lack of that man groove vegetative support , people are erecting them to collapse once more.
A NEW STUDY GIVING STARTLING RESULTS
Queen’s University, Belfast, and Institute of Environment Studies & Wetland Management (IESWM) researchers are going to give a new dimension to the climate related concerns in sundarbans.
They postulate that uninhabited islands are higher in level than inhabited islands. They support this fact by the observation that in inhabited islands the embankments prevent the sea waters form coming in and hence their is no new sedimentation over the islands where as in uninhabited islands they are abundant CREEKS and no restrictive embankments so facilitating sedimentation.
Now this study group is planing to take on radiocarbon study of sediments deep in soil to find out the rate of sedimentation and then comparing it to rate of rise in sea level to find out that is this sedimentation really competing with the sea level rise and thereby have prevented the uninhabited islands from inundation and submerging .
If this goes in favor the hypothesis then the researchers would go upto advice that we can depopulate the islands to help them survive the rising sea level.
But looking at the population density in sundarbans 1437/ sq. km it would be a challenging conservation effort if to be taken.
Total islands in suindarbans are 102 and out of these 54 are inhabited.
