- Ghoramara Island
Ghoramara Island is located ca. 150 km south of
Kolkata ,Bay of Bengal , in theSundarban Delta complex, India is a small island roughly five square kilometres in area. It is disappearing fast due to erotion and the rising sea. Global warming has caused the rivers that pour down from the Himalayas and empty into the Bay of Bengal to swell and shift in recent decades, placing these already fragile islands, known as the Sundarbans, in the mouth of daily danger.hrinking of island
A recent study by Sugata Hazra, an oceanographer at
Jadavpur University in nearby Kolkata, found that during the last 30 years, roughly 80 square kilometers, or 31 square miles, of the Sundarbans have disappeared. More than 600 families have been displaced, according to the local government authorities. Ghoramara alone has shrunk to under five square kilometers, about half its size in 1969, Hazra's study concluded. In the last 20 years, two other islands have vanished entirely, an uninhabited island Suparibhanga (also called Bedford) being one of them.Population
The 2001 Government of India census still showed a population of 5,000 in Ghoramara though this population is believed to have shrunk as families are displaced by the islands sinking.
References
*Satellite view from Google images [http://www.satelliteviews.net/cgi-bin/w.cgi?c=in&UF=387405&UN=484026&AF=T_G]
*International Herald Tribune article [http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/04/10/asia/india.php]
*"Morphological changes of Ghoramara Island: a documentation." Indian Journal of Geography and Environment. Vol.2, p. 64-65, 1997.
*"Destruction and Agony in Ghoramara Island." Paper accepted to present in the 22nd Conference of Institute of Indian Geographers (IIG) and IGU Commission meeting on Land Degradation and Desertification, January 9-1, 2001.
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