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Impact of flood and seasonality on wetland changing trends in the Diara region of West Bengal, India

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Abstract

The hydrological condition of any floodplain wetland depends on the water availability through surface run-off from adjacent areas. The seasonal variation of rainfall and resultant flood bring massive change in the wetlands of that region. The present study focuses on identifying wetland inventories and trend of wetlands of the Diara region of West Bengal. Diara region of Eastern India is a highly dynamic physical region bounded by two frequently shifting rivers (River Ganga and Kalindri) and relatively tightly bound river Mahananda in its three sides. Two types of Normalised Difference Water Index, water presence frequency and hydrological stability analysis using LANDSAT data of 1973–2016 have been done for this study. The result shows that the wetland area was 14,124.78 ha during 1999 and it has turned into 4885.92 ha during 2016 which indicates the extreme flood event of 1998–1999 over entire region has brought a boost in the wetland scenario for a shorter period but it is in the decaying phase now-a-days. Total 1552.56 ha of wetland in this area is identified as stable based on the regular appearance of water over there.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Geography, Chandidas Mahavidyalaya, Khujutipara, Birbhum, 731215, India

    Kaustuv Mukherjee

  2. Department of Geography, Visva-Bharati University, Santiniketan, 731235, India

    Kaustuv Mukherjee & Malay Mukhopadhyay

  3. Department of Geography, University of Gour Banga, Malda, 732103, India

    Swades Pal

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  1. Kaustuv Mukherjee
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Correspondence to Kaustuv Mukherjee.

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Mukherjee, K., Pal, S. & Mukhopadhyay, M. Impact of flood and seasonality on wetland changing trends in the Diara region of West Bengal, India. Spat. Inf. Res. 26, 357–367 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s41324-018-0177-z

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