US-India/Bangladesh Cooperative Research: Architecture, Dynamics, and Hazards of the Ganges-Brahmaputra Delta

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9900487Steckler Description: This award supports the project "US-India/Bangladesh Cooperative Research: Architecture, Dynamics, and Hazards of the Ganges-Brahmaputra Delta." Michael Steckler, Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, Columbia University will collaborate with Pradip Dasgupta, University of Calcutta and Md. Hussain Monsur, University of Dhaka, Bangladesh to characterize the subsidence and stratigraphy of the Ganges-Brahmaputra (GB) delta and the geologic processes which have shaped them. Deltas have long been centers of civilization; however, their environment is fragile, dependent upon the delicate balance between all processes causing subsidence and sedimentation filling in the available space. Monitoring and analyzing the prominent changes affecting the world's largest and most active delta offers unique opportunities for understanding fundamental geologic processes. The GB is an extreme example of a deltaic coastal region susceptible to natural disaster from storm surges, flooding, salt-water intrusion, and tectonic activity due to its situation at a plate boundary. Additionally, groundwater pumping over the past few decades has mobilized naturally occurring arsenic from the underlying sediments and poses a major arsenic-poisoning calamity. Scope: This research initiates a major multi-disciplinary, multi-institutional international project to study the GB delta. The degree of interaction among elements active in the delta requires an integrated approach. The principal objective is to link an improved understanding of the geologic, geodetic, seismologic, and geochemical processes of the delta with ongoing and planned engineering activities and with societal development. Combining fundamental research with immediate and long-term applications will be important to a variety of national and international agencies interested in hazard mitigation. This project is supported jointly by the Marine Geology and Geophysics Program, Division of Ocean Sciences and the Division of International Programs.