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An Appraisal to Anthropogeomorphology of the Chel River Basin, Outer Eastern Himalayas and Foreland, West Bengal, India

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Applied Geomorphology and Contemporary Issues

Part of the book series: Geography of the Physical Environment ((GEOPHY))

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Abstract

The Eastern Himalayas is ecologically fragile and at the same time is also home to some of the world’s poorest people. Thus, to assess the nature and extent of resource utilization by the locals and its implications on the geomorphology, the present work attempts to present the prevailing scenario of anthropogenic alteration of the fluvial environment of outer Eastern Himalaya and its immediate foreland through an anthropogeomorphic assessment of a small river basin named the Chel. The assessment was carried out using SRTM DEM, Landsat images, Topographical maps, Google Earth images in ArcGIS 10.1 environment, and MS excel sheets coupled with extensive field surveys. Sediment mining, extensions of embankments, bridge construction, land-use change, extensive cultivation on channel bars, growth of tourism, road widening are the major human activities identified, altering the geomorphology and a few of its individual and combined implications on Chel basin are bed elevation changes, instability of channel bars and thalweg shifting, shifting of pool-riffle sequence, deformation of channel beds, channel planform changes, channel migration, effects on channel geometric and hydraulic parameters has been discussed in detail. Overall, the work reinforces the fact that humans have emerged as one of the most dominant factors among all, changing or altering the natural environment of the earth in this Anthropocene.

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Acknowledgements

The first author would like to acknowledge the financial assistance received in the form of Minor Research Project from the University Grants Commission (UGC), through letter no. F.PHW-135/15-16(ERO) dated: 02/12/2016. First author would also like to thank friends Mr. Lenin Rai and Miss Asha Lama from Gorubathan and Malbazaar, respectively for taking care of his lodging, fooding, and introducing the study area during the initial phase of the study. Several students from Darjeeling Govt. College, Adarsh Chamling, Supratim Bhatta, Asif Subba, and Junaid Akhtar helped during the field surveys and their help is thankfully acknowledged. We also would like to acknowledge handling reviewer cum editor, Prof. Michael Nones for thorough review and constructive suggestions which greatly enhanced the manuscript.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Geography, Darjeeling Government College, Darjeeling, West Bengal, 734101, India

    Sonam Lama

  2. Department of Geography, Vidyasagar University, Medinipur, West Bengal, 721102, India

    Ramkrishna Maiti

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  1. Sonam Lama
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  2. Ramkrishna Maiti
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Correspondence to Sonam Lama .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Geography, Diamond Harbour Women’s University, Diamond Harbour, West Bengal, India

    Sujit Mandal

  2. Department of Geography and Environment Management, Vidyasagar University, Midnapore, West Bengal, India

    Ramkrishna Maiti

  3. Department of Hydrology and Hydrodynamics, Polish Academy of Sciences, Warsaw, Poland

    Michael Nones

  4. Department of Geography, Environment of Science and Planning, University of Swaziland, Swaziland, Eswatini

    Heinz R. Beckedahl

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Lama, S., Maiti, R. (2022). An Appraisal to Anthropogeomorphology of the Chel River Basin, Outer Eastern Himalayas and Foreland, West Bengal, India. In: Mandal, S., Maiti, R., Nones, M., Beckedahl, H.R. (eds) Applied Geomorphology and Contemporary Issues. Geography of the Physical Environment. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-04532-5_2

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