12-14 September, 2011, Lucknow - Earth Science India

National Conference on Science of Climate Change and Earth’s Sustainability: Issues and Challenges ‘A Scientist-People Partnership’
12-14 September, 2011, Lucknow
indicate presence of North Atlantic events including Bond, Dansgaard-Oeschger
(D-O) and Heinrich events, indicating that North Atlantic variability brings
pronounced changes in the Indian monsoon on millennial time scales.
ROLE OF ECO-GEOMORPHOLOGY IN MANAGEMENT
OF LARGE RIVERS: FOCUS ON THE GANGA RIVER
Rajiv Sinha
Geosciences Group, Department of Civil Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur
Email: rsinha@iitk.ac.in
River management strategies all around the world have moved from the
engineering dominated ‘command and control’ approach to an integrated ‘ecosystem
based approach’ that relies on synthesis of hydrological – geomorphological and
ecological data. Attempts are now on to design engineering solutions using scientific
framework of the river system as the basic template for human intervention. Over
the years. the ‘command and control’ approach has been followed in river
management which is based on single purpose, deterministic approach, which
remained focused on site or reach specific scales without serious consideration of
upstream and downstream consequences and related connectivity issues. On the
contrary, the ‘ecosystem based’ approach is a cross-disciplinary, holistic approach
applied at catchment scale - a probabilistic approach which recognizes uncertainty
and complexity in the system. The physical template of a river system provides the
basic structure to analyse the different aspects in an integrated approach. The
ecological condition and biotic associations in a river are significantly influenced by
geomorphic condition of the river, and therefore, any efforts towards river
rehabilitation must address these issues to derive a long-term benefit. Such
geomorphic diversity may be generated in various ways – discharge regimes and
vegetation cover (driven by climatic setting), channel slope and bankline (driven by
catchment morphology), sediment flux and accommodation (driven by geological
settings). Recent research on river systems has also highlighted the importance of
understanding controls on channel morphology as a basis for river management and
rehabilitation work. River morphology not only varies from upstream to downstream
in a particular system but also from catchment to catchment in a particular region.
Characterisation of the geomorphic conditions of river systems provides the basic
and first order data set for stream management programme.
This paper is based on our new results from a large programme on Ganga
River Basin Management Plan (GRBMP) initiated by the Ministry of Environment
and Forests has which aims to provide a basic framework for developing a river
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