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Impact on Climate and Land Use Changes Around Ganga River

Location:India Viluppuram, Tamil Nadu, India

In India, Ganga is the largest river and also famous spiritual river, in meantime pollution issue in Ganga river is considered to be one of the most discussed topics on river water quality in the past decades. The river gets severely polluted with untreated industrial and human wastes, and the river crossed around 11 states in India and provides water for about 40% of India's population, approximately 500 million people, we couldn’t find more than any other river in the world [1, 2].

Central Pollution Control Board (CPCB) has mentioned that 764 grossly polluting industries were discharging into the Ganga river, 487 industries are from the Kanpur region. Therefore, the Kanpur region was treated as the main polluted spot and immediate action should be taken for further recovery of water quality.

The Kanpur region is one of the most important industrialized place in India. It is the most polluted stretch of the Ganga River, because of its excessive pollutant discharge from the industries. Climate change as well as the pollution risk in this industrialized stretch of Ganga is affecting the agricultural land in this region. Analyze the potential impacts of climate change and land use change on the water quality is the emerging study for the clean of the Ganga River project.


Figure 1. Ganga River at Varanasi in the year 1900 and 2018.

Recently, Professor Pradeep Mujumdar and his research team from the Indian Institute of Science (IISc), India, have analyzed to quantify the individual contribution of climatic and land use parameters on water quality in this region. They also analyze the water quality for the combined climate change and land use land cover (LULC) scenarios. QUAL2K water quality simulation model, was used for their investigations [3].

They measured important water quality indicators such as Dissolved Oxygen (DO), ammonia, nitrate, Biochemical Oxygen Demand (BOD), Organic Phosphorous (OP), Inorganic Phosphorous (IP) and Total Phosphorous (TP), Total Nitrogen (TN), and Faecal Coliform (FC) are assessed for eight climate change and six land use land cover scenarios.

Increase in the agricultural land area leads to larger nutrient concentration an while increase in the built-up area causes an increase in faecal coliform concentration. Results from this hypothetical study could provide valuable guidance for improving the water quality of the Ganges in future climate change and land use change scenarios.

---Pradeep Mujumdar (Professor, IISc, Bangalore, India).

Historical water quality analysis was carried out for the area of Ankinghat, Kanpur and Shahzadpur in Kanpur region. In this analysis, they have used different indicators such as minimum, mean and maximum DO, BOD, nitrate and ammonia. Their result clearly indicates the reduction in DO and increase in BOD, nitrate and ammonia concentration for Ankinghat and Kanpur.

The analyzed result of FC: FC is one of the most important indicators in the Ganga River analysis. This study can be noted that the entire stretch is heavily polluted with FC, with a major contributions from drains joining with the river. Generally, FC should be 0 MPN (Most Probable Number)/100 mL for drinking water use and it should be less than 500 MPN/100 mL for bathing use. The minimum value of FC observed at Ankinghat and Shahzadpur is ~3000 MPN/100 mL, which is much higher than 500MPN/100 mL indicating that the entire stretch is not suitable for bathing purpose. 

LULC Scenarios: From their results, there is almost no change in DO for various LULC scenarios considered for Kanpur and the result showed for Shahzadpur DO slightly decreases, corresponding to an increase in the agricultural land area and also increase in nutrient concentration with the increase in agricultural land area.

BOD is found to increase with a maximum percentage increase of 1.4% and 0.2% at Kanpur and Shahzadpur, respectively. There is 0.5% for Kanpur and 0.2% for Shahzadpur increase in ammonia concentration with the increase in built up land area. As the same time, an almost a similar trend is noted for nitrate, TN, OP, IP and TP.

Consideration of entire stretch for this research study has contain a high BOD of above 3 mg/L, within the reach from Kanpur and downstream. The various order of scenarios such as BOD, TN, OP, IP, TP concentration, ammonia, nitrate concentrations varies in the following order:

7Q10 < LULC < Climate < Combined

At the Jajmau downstream for the combined scenario, a maximum of BOD simulated value achieved is 29 mg/L. The major influence of land use and climate change on FC revealed a high spatial variability unlike other parameters. At Unnao and Jajmau loading downstream of Kanpur, the first abrupt increase was observed, while at Pandu river with confluence was seen at the second abrupt downstream. The water quality decreases with progressive scenarios of climate, 7Q10, LULC and combined effect at the upstream reach of Kanpur. At Jajmau downstream for the combined scenario, a sudden increase in the ammonia which corresponds to the inputs of the point source with a maximum concentration of ammonia with 9102 µg/L was observed.

S. Santy et al., concluded that the individual impacts of climate change and land cover change on all mentioned water quality indicators are analyzed for the heavily industrialized stretch of the Ganga River in India. The heavily industrialized stretch of Kanpur was predicted from their studies and also they mentioned that the Ganga River is found to be polluted for the low flow periods because of the industrial effluents and agricultural runoff. The main indicators of climate change and LULC cover scenarios are considered in this study to lead higher pollution. The DO of the critical points is reduced in the climate change scenarios.

Almost all water quality parameters are improved with temperature increase due to increased reaction kinetics at higher temperatures except for DO. Stream flow reduction is a serious problem as it results in larger concentration of pollutants. Increase in the agricultural land area results in higher pollution, especially for nutrients of nitrogen and phosphorous lead to eutrophication. An increase in built-up land area results in higher FC pollution.

From this study the forestation is the best way for the environmental clean-up process, and the scenario with more forestland conversion results in better water quality. It can also be found that the effects of climate change and land use change on water quality parameters add nearly linear. The industrial load and sewage load are subjected to change in the future which brings uncertainty to our water quality analysis.

Our SNB team recommended this research article to enrich our viewer’s knowledge to aware about the problem of Ganga river pollution and to find out the pathway for pollution free scenario. This research study provides an assessment of the individual contribution of temperature rise and stream flow change, LULC change to agricultural, built up and forest areas on water quality, which will be helpful for the policy makers and pollution control authorities to take suitable and necessary actions for pollution free Ganga river.

 --- Mrs. S. Siva Padma Devi

Guest Lecturer, Department of Geography,

M.V. Muthiah Government Arts College (Women), 

Dindigul, Tamil Nadu, India

References:

  1. "The WaterHub" Retrieved 14 May 2015. Emily Wax (17 June 2007).
  2. "A Sacred River Endangered by Global Warming". Washington Post. Retrieved 25 June 2017.
  3. S. Santy et al., Sci. Report 10, 9107 (2020) https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-020-66171-x.


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  1. BalaNovember 11, 2020 at 9:11 PM

    Publish about Namami Ganga project it will helpful for UPSC exam preparation.

    ReplyDelete

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