ANNOUNCEMENTS
Assam is a state where flood plains are utilized for farming purpose. A tiny fraction of land loss leads to huge socio-economic loss. Riverbank line shifting calculation is one of the important components for finding the stream bank accretion and erosion rate. The study focuses on the flood prone districts of North bank plain zone of Assam. Channel migration is being studied using the multi-temporal satellite images for three consecutive years in the temporal gap of 5 years from 2005 to 2016. The riverbank morphologic change has been calculated using the Digital Shoreline Analysis System (DSAS) software. Net shoreline Movement (NSM) is calculated to measure the crop damage occurred in each district of North bank plain zone. Erosion is more prominent along the banks of Brahmaputra River. It has been found that in Dhemaji, Majuli and Sonitpur districts areas of agricultural land with more than 400 hectares is lost in the period of 10 years from 2005 -2015 due to erosion. Little loss of cultivable land is observed in Darrang district.
Keywords: Digital Shoreline Analysis System, Assam, riverbank line shift, channel migration, crop damage.
