Abstract
Covering an area of 25,500 km2 with its awe-inspiring symphony of nature, Sundarban delta is part of the delta of the rivers Ganges, Brahmaputra and Meghna, spanning across both India and Bangladesh. Concerned research is being focused on Indian part stated as Indian Sundarban Delta (ISD) covering 9,630 km2 of an area. Vibrant mangrove adobe with dynamic land and geomorphic features is making this UNESCO heritage site unique in every aspect. ISD is of immense value both ecologically and economically and moreover has potential to act as a shield of protection from any sort of natural hazards to the entire city of Kolkata and south Bengal. But with the pace of time, changing vegetative to climatic conditions is imposing a serious threat to the region by changing the hazard characteristics. Henceforth, the concerned study over a period of 15 years is being conducted to sculpture the present scenario of the hazards and risk associated with those. Cloud free images of Landsat 4TM, Landsat 5TM and Landsat L7ETM + SLC have been analyzed in Geoinformatic Software (ERDAS 9.2) in order to depict the changes in vegetation cover. Temperature and precipitation trend analysis is being detected on statistical software (EXCEL and SPSS) so as to capture the changing climatic canvas. In the process, natural hazard risk assessment of ISD of the said time period is being also performed statistically. Finally, a correlation model is being developed among the vegetation, climate and hazard in order to dug out the impact of vegetation change on to the temperature and precipitation conditions leading to a changing and threatening characteristic of the hazards. Such assessment will also help to reform the socio-economic structure of ISD. In total present estimation will pave a way for the formation of the sustainable management model of the most fragile ecosystem—Indian Sundarban Delta.
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Acknowledgements
The present research work has received support from all sectors. Firstly and fore mostly, we are indebted to the Department of Civil Engineering, Jadavpur University, and Kolkata, India for the infrastructural support. We provide our gratitude to the Department of Disaster Management, West Bengal and to the Agro-meteorological department of West Bengal for providing us the useful data-based information. We are also thankful to the research scholars of the department of Civil Engineering, Jadavpur University, for sharing their pearls of wisdom throughout the research phase.
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Guha, P., Aitch, P., Bhandari, G. (2020). Effect of Changing Vegetation Coverage and Meteorological Parameters on the Hazard Characteristics of Indian Sundarban Region and Its Impact There On. In: Pal, I., von Meding, J., Shrestha, S., Ahmed, I., Gajendran, T. (eds) An Interdisciplinary Approach for Disaster Resilience and Sustainability. MRDRRE 2017. Disaster Risk Reduction. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-32-9527-8_25
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