Delineation of Channel Migration Zone and Its Change in Post Farakka Barrage, a Case in Kalindri River of Eastern India

Abstract

Migration of river channel is a natural process but sometimes it can create problems such as land ownership conflict, land loss and loss of infrastructure. Present study deals with the river Kalindri of Malda district which is considered as a branch of Pullahar. The principle objective of this work is to delineate channel migration corridor of the river Kalindri. For the demarcation of channel migration zone (CMZ), construction of historical migration zone (HMZ), erosion buffer (EB), avulsion potential zone (APZ) etc. is performed. The results clearly display that the river has a historical channel migration zone of 218.24 km2 with average lateral width of 3.37 km in between 1924 to 2015. After Farakka Barrage project (1973), volume of water and river energy is reduced significantly and it causes squeezing of wide channel migration zone (1.63 km). Total 74 number of villages fall under present channel migration zone and out of them 27% villages are prone to high frequency channel migration problem.