The Vulnerable Sunderban Ecosystem:Problems Ahead from Ecological and Biological Perspectives

Abstract

Sunderban is found at the coast of the Ganges river and designated as the world’s single largest mangrove forest with 3.5 percent of the world’s mangroves covering an area of 6017 sq km. The Sunderban wetlands act as a natural buffer that protects the coastal area from storm surges and cyclones in pre and post monsoon periods. However, due to increase in irrigation of agriculture, industrial activity and the diversion of Ganges water at Farakka Barrage (India) in early 1975, both siltation and salinity have increased in Sunderban which has become an ever-increasing threat for the Sunderban ecosystem. Consequently the dominant Sundari (Heritiera fomes) and Goran (Ceriops decendra) are affected by top-dying disease which has been emerging as a great point of concern. Management of water salinity simulation and landscape modelling would be a proper tool for decision making and allow planners to protect the Sunderban ecosystem from this threat in future. Sunderban, the only mangrove tiger-land of the globe is presently under threat of severe coastal erosion due to relative sea level rise. The once largest progressing delta which registers the highest species diversity in terms of mangrove and mangrove associate flora and fauna is now showing evidences which suggest that rich biodiversity is under tremendous threat. Increasingly, this deltaic island system is facing degradation due to natural and anthropogenic changes. Frequent embankment failures, submergence and flooding, beach erosion and siltation at jetties and navigational channels, cyclone and storm surges are all promulgating this area increasingly vulnerable. In addition, alarming growth of population in this ecologically sensitive and fragile niche has posed a major threat for its very existence. Wide scale reclamation, deforestation and unsustainable resource exploitation practices have together produced changes in the physical and socio-biological dynamics of the coastal system.