The Bengal Delta's contemporary environmental crises such as contested sea-level rise, accelerating groundwater depletion, widespread river sedimentation and intensifying salinity intrusion are not merely climate-driven phenomena. This study demonstrates that they represent the accumulated legacy of four centuries of human-centric interventions that systematically disrupted the delta's hydrological and morphological integrity. In this science talk, Prof. Islam will present how river diversions, channel cuts and embankment construction progressively broke the ecological connectivity of the Bengal Delta. His analysis is based on integration of advanced geospatial analysis, i.e., GRACE/GRACE-FO satellite gravimetry 2002-2025, time-series bathymetric surveys for three coastal rivers including historical map analysis with human geography perspectives and colonial archival research (1600 AD to present).
Speaker
Sheikh Tawhidul Islam
Senior Research Fellow, Disaster Management and Climate Change Analytics in South Asia
