There are many reasons to explain why the River Ganges is so liable to flooding, and I will explain some of these causes within this essay. Some of these such reasons are caused by man and his influence in the area, and others are due to natural attributes of the area such as the climate and relief.

One such cause of flooding is the length of the river itself: it stretches for a distance of almost 2500 kilometres, and has a massive drainage basin of over half a million square kilometres. The sheer scale of the drainage basin is important in that within this area many different environments are enveloped: over such a large area, there are many varied types of land and climate variations, each with it’s own problems including f

One of these problems is the creation of Deltas by silt and sediment. Deposition on the river channel means that the river has a narrower area to flow through, and in cases where deposition has created many ‘islands’ of silt, when the flow and velocity of water speeds up, thechannel cannot hold it through such a meandering course and it simply flows over the land creating very severe floods as the following flow of water will follow the same route until the river subsides to its usual levels.

Another problem the Ganga faces is that it is an international drainage basin, receiving flow from rivers in Tibet, Nepal & NW India. As a result, not only must it deal with its own input of water in the rivers, but also that of the otherrivers feeding from surrounding countries. The human influnce on the rivers in these countries, for example deforestation, will have a knock-on effect on Bangladesh, something that very little can be done about without the co-oreration of the other nations involved. There is much controversy regarding the river and its control, with the Farakka Dam being a point of controversy. During the rainy season, India may open the dam, releasing vast quantities of water into the river, at rates of up to 2.5 million cubic feet per second, an input which is not needed by Bangladesh, and one of such a large quantity that it is inevitable that flooding will occur.

looding, and so the river must deal with all of these as they are included within it’s drainage basin.

Some topics in this essay:
Farakka Dam, River Ganges, July October, NW India, River Brahmaputra, drainage basin, Ganges Delta, input water, river ganges, water entering river, flow water, entering river, water entering, deal sudden, volume water, bangladesh little, effects flooding,