One may be living miles away from oceans but still one is connected to these natural water bodies for different human needs, varying from food to medicines to entertainment. On the World Ocean Day marked by United Nations as a measure to spread awareness to conserve oceans which hold 97 per cent of water on earth and thus conserve our future, The Pioneer speaks to some of the city- based hydrology experts.
All the water bodies are connected to one another from a single seasonal stream to a massive ocean. Humans are dependent on water bodies as they act as the transport channels and our survival depends on various ecosystems sustained by the oceans. The director of National Institute of Hydrology Roorkee Sharad Kumar Jain said, “We need to conserve the water bodies surrounding us. By constant exploitation of natural resources and polluting them, we are posing threat to our future generations who would be deprived of basic need of water. Indiscriminate use of plastic and dumping of plastic waste in water bodies needs to be checked immediately lest the whole ecosystem gets disturbed.”
Former IITian, Devendra Swaroop Bhargava who developed way back in 1970s with his camera transparent film (dispositive) for spectrum analysis, a technique to determine the quality of water and detect under-sea objects, now popularized as remote sensing technique, says, “The mining adversely affects the aquatic life in the rivers.
Through remote sensing technique one can measure the suspended particles going in the Ganga from stone crusher, thereby assessing the damage done to the environment. The stone crushers need to be located away from rivers to give minimum effect on the aquatic ecosystems.”
About his first article published in 1983 in Journal of American Society for Remote Sensing, the editor mentioned his technique, saying that Bhargava was the first person to use Beckman Spectrophotometer for spectrum analysis of dispositive of photos taken on water to correlate remote sensing parameter with even BOD, a parameter that speaks of water’s putrefying character.
The US Army chief of Estuaries Division W H McAnally also wrote, “Our work in field measurement of suspended sediment concentration in estuaries could benefit from use of spectral data from satellite images.” The Indian government must take cognizance of the scientific studies done on the water bodies and take measurable steps to conserve them for the benefit of mankind, added the scientist.