Review Article
Year: 2018 | Month: January | Volume: 5 | Issue: 1 | Pages: 33-42
The Dried River Deltas: A Comparision of Amu Darya, Yellow River & Murray-Darling Rivers
Sameer Lal
Phd Researcher, Jawahar Lal University, New Delhi
ABSTRACT
Since the industrial revolution, the human desire to control water and to reclaim wetlands has led to widespread ecological degradation. The first signs of over-irrigation and the consequent land degradation and silting in waterways were among the causes that led to the fall of Mesopotamia. The over-use of water has stopped eight rivers in the world from their rendezvous with the seas. These are Colorado, Amu Darya, Syr Darya, Indus, Teesta, Rio Grande, Yellow and Murray-Darling rivers. This paper summarizes the similarity and causes of drying of Amu Darya in Uzbekistan, Yellow river in China and Murray-Darling Australia. Due to rising populations, which required more food and more resources, the post-Second World War era saw a shift away from traditional water management. Additional land was brought under cultivation, facilitated by long distance irrigation canals. The scope of water use also saw a dramatic shift. It was now harnessed for electricity and industrial applications. Further, new infrastructure was required to meet the enhanced scope of water use. Large dams for electricity and irrigation. There was shift to water-intensive crops. These developments led to the huge extraction of water from rivers thus disturbing water cycles leading to drying of rivers before reaching their deltas.
Key words: Rivers, Basin, Murray-Darling, Yellow river, Amu Darya, Deltas, Non-Traditional Crops (NTC).
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