Badlands Dynamics and River Environment

The Planform pattern and its change over time is the key measure to understand the river health. The pristine, incised river Chambal, a part of Ganges systems in semi-arid region of central part of India, lost its natural flow in many places for the past decades. Therefore, the objectives of this study are to understand the dynamics of badlands and to map the implications on the river system in the region. To fulfil these objectives, the dynamics of badlands over 40 years have been identified through different satellite images. Further, quantitative and qualitative data collected through longitudinal physical field surveys, along with the focus group discussions of villagers. It has been found that the major river and its tributaries banks are occupied by a large size of Badlands which are no longer remain the same due to rapid land levelling. Around 640km2 of these thick badlands of this region has been flatten and converted to agricultural land in the last four decades. The fall out of the levelled land leads to severe soil loss after every monsoon and all the gully channels contribute a significant amount of sediments to the river system. On the other hand, the mining activities on the riverbed is making its flow reduced over the years and the river has lost its further flow in many sections which is one of the reasons for changing the planform significantly. The noticeable impacts of the river systems are the change of ripple and pool sequence, formation and expanding of bars and increasing silt. which is upsetting the natural habitat of various endanger aquatic animal of Chambal river and occurrence of floods have also been increased enormously in the region.