EPOW - Ecology Picture of the Week

Brahmaputra River and islands, Assam, northeast India

Explanation:  We are flying at airline altitude over the labyrinthine channels of the amazing Brahmaputra River of northeast India.  Far below, the blue river channels outline temporary sand bars during the dry season.  The river islands are maximally used for crop fields and agricultures while the weather permits.  Some islands even hold entire villages.  

During monsoon season, many of these islands flood, in part or completely.  Here is a constantly itinerant population, the seasonal farmer communities risking floods for food.  How they persist is a testimony to their astounding tenacity and strength.

The Brahmaputra River Valley also houses an amazing diversity of plants and wildlife, including wild buffalo, the great Indian one-horned rhinoceros, Bengal tigers, and Asian elephants.  Although the crop soils in the valley are highly productive, local denizens run the risk of not just flooding but depredation of their crops by wildlife.  It is a tough life.  

The Brahmaputra runs some 1800 miles (2900 km) from its source in Tibet in the Himalaya Mountains to its mouth in the Bay of Bengal.  Amazingly, this subtropical river has its source in Tibet's Chemayungdung Glacier before its plunge to the vast floodplain stretches in India and along Bangladesh.

For food and worship, the Brahmaputra is revered in Hinduism as a sacred river.  

But a tiny island in the mouth of the river at the bay can be a critical early warning signal and microcosm of how global climate change and reduction in food production can threaten all of our existence.  This is a lesson worth heeding.

Information:
     Shrivastava, R.J., and J. T. Heinen.  2005.  Migration and home gardens in the Brahmaputra Valley, Assam, India.  Journal of Ecological Anthropology 9:20-34.