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Environmental Hazard of Tea garden belt in Jalpaiguri District, West Bengal
Shyam Sundar Banerjee and Bikash Ch. Poddar
Center for Study of Man & Environment, Kolkata-91,
Sharmila Chakraborty
P D Woman’s College, Jalpaiguri, W B, India,
Mita Saha
Natural Resources of Digital Database Centre, Jalpaiguri, W B, India
Introduction:
Integrated development is one of the important dimensions of economic aspects in our country. Mapping communities is therefore an integral component of planning, while mapping communities, it is important to include not only the physical / surface geography but also the social geography. The district of Jalpaiguri in West Bengal flanks the foothill of the Himalayas. The area forms a part of what is well known in literature as the ‘Terai’ or ‘Dooars’ and has lately been subjected to large-scale human interference and its consequential hazards, mainly, river shifting, deforestation, water quality and also social problem. Water resources are at the heart of sustainable development in Jalpaiguri district. Water of sufficient quantity and quality is an essential resource for agriculture, industry and tourism, but also for everyday life in cities and villages. But water resources are deplete and degrade due to the use of huge amount chemicals in tea garden belts for better production which contaminates ground water through percolation and rivers and other water bodies through surface run-off. The lost of quality is causing health hazards and death of human which disturbs the whole ecology system of this region. The identification of environmental hazard of tea garden belts is directly or indirectly caused by the water quality, geomorplogy, geological, hydrological condition and other land use and also socio-economic pattern with the help of GIS.
Study Area:
The present investigation area untakes to unravel the various geological, geomorphological features encountered while studying Quaternary fluvial deposits and land forms in the Mahananda, Tista, Jaldhaka, Torsa basins in parts of Jalpaiguri district in West Bengal, bounded by 260 16 to 27002 North latitude and 88004 to 89053 East longitude covering an area of 6227 Sq.Km. This district is bounded to its North by the Himalayan ranges including the Darjeeling, Sikkim & Bhutan Himalaya from West to East. Jalpaiguri district is flanked by Darjeeling and Bhutan in the North, Assam in the East, Bangladesh and Coochbehar is the South and Bangladesh and Darjeeling in the West.
Topography of this district and its environs is characterized by uneven elevation of this region varies form 62m to 350m. The altitude falls from 350m to above mean sea level at the foot of the Himalayas to 150m above mean sea level over a distance of 25km and then falls to about 60m above mean sea level over a distance 110 km further south. The climate of the area is characterized by a sub-topical & humid, the maximum, minimum temperature 370 C and 60C respectively. The average annual rainfall of this district is 3736mm.The storm rainfall is of hydro-meteorological significance causing inundation and flood of the area.
Geomorphological set up of the area:
Jalpaiguri district is bounded in the North by the hill ranges of the Himalayan and the South by the piedmont plains, which gradually grade into the alluvial plains further south. This district exhibits a diversity sediment and soil colour. This feature has been fan deposit in this tectonically affected composing the piedmont plain in the area are of apparently fluvial origin. As evidence by the huge size of the boulders they display later fluvial activity is seen in the terraces and later deposits besides a plethora of distributary channels. Rill and gully erosion over a long period of time has produced an undulatory surface in these ancient deposits. The North they consist mainly of pebble to quartzite overlain by finer water lain deposit. Later fluvial deposits ranging mainly from cobble to clay size material over lain the area. In alluvial plains leaves, back swamps, ox- bow lakes etc. represent the usual landscape features comprising mainly the more recent flood plains but ancient flood plains surfaces may, perhaps be coeval with the uplifted Barind landform.
Geological and structural set up of area:
The geological milieu in the district represents the sub-Himalayas or the foothill zone consist almost entirely of the Siwaliks and typical formation of Quaternary and recent sediments. The upper part of the district mainly consist of Siwalik and older Quaternary formation, which are dominated by thick boulder and conglomerate horizons. The lower portion occurs as a fluvial terrace deposit. The recent sediments mainly represent thicks pile of fluvial, unconsolidated sediments.
The various faulting occur in this region. The time of faulting ranges from Pliocene to Recent with some of the structures assumed to be seismically active. The tectonic activity has played the pivotal role in creating the elevations and depression has had both a direct and indirect effect on the erosion and depositional aspect and drainage networks in the region, which persist even today.
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