EPOW - Ecology Picture of the Week

The Plains of Bangladesh

The plains of Sylhet, Northern Bangladesh

Explanation:  These are the plains of northern Bangladesh, stretching into the hazy horizon flat and saturated from monsoon rains.  Bangladesh is bordered by India on all but a small southeast corner where it adjoins Myanmar, and on the south its coastline along the Bay of Bengal.  

Our view is toward the south from atop the last of the southern ridges of the Khasi Hills of India's state of Meghalaya.  We are seeing Bangladesh's Sylhet Division.

Bangladesh has very little topographic relief and is the recipient of the massive flows of the Ganges and Brahmaputra Rivers and many other water channels.  In fact, some 58 rivers occurring in Bangladesh run from India.  The waterways are transportation corridors for international trade, both legal and illegal.

Bangladesh suffers massive flooding from the annual monsoon storms with terrible human suffering.  To create levees and protect some lands, Bangladesh imports large quarried rocks from India's hill states. 

According to one source, the groundwater of southern Bangladesh is contaminated with arsenic, spurring the development of an Arsenic Crisis Information Centre that provides mapped locations of arsenic occurrence.   

 
View toward the south of northern Bangladesh, from the Khasi Hills
of Meghalaya, India.  This Sylhet Division of Bangladesh has tea
plantations and many rice fields, but few extensive forests or woodlands.