Indian Scientists Race to Map Ganges River in 3D Digital Models of the River and Settlements Will Help Authorities to Reduce Pollution

Home , Ganges Basin, Kelvin Droegemeier

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The Ganges is one of the world’s most polluted rivers.

GEOGRAPHY Indian scientists race to map Ganges river in 3D Digital models of the river and settlements will help authorities to reduce pollution.

BY LOU DEL BELLO track sources of waste and help authorities clean instruments will soon start scanning the up one of the world’s most polluted waterways. 2,525-kilometre stretch of river that passes cientists and engineers are about to “It’s a race against time,” says Girish Kumar, through five Indian states — one metre at a begin the monumental task of mapping who heads the national surveying agency, the time. Lidar is a technique similar to radar, in the vast stretch of the Ganges river that Survey of India based in Dehradun in the Him- which instruments bounce laser pulses off the Sruns through India, in unprecedented detail. alayan foothills, which is leading the project. ground. The researchers will use it to produce They hope to get started on the work before Although the mapping is expected to take digital elevation models of the watercourse and the monsoon brings bad weather that could about eight months, the team is eager to get the hundreds of thousands of buildings that sit delay the project. started in case the monsoon season, which up to 10 kilometres either side of the riverbank. Their goal is to create the most comprehen- began in June, forces them to ground the If the schedule goes to plan, the 3D maps sive picture yet of the topography of the river planes that will be doing much of the work. should be available by the end of next year. and the human settlements that surround it, to A fleet of small aircraft equipped with lidar The project will produce high-resolution

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maps of the drainage systems of major cities as planned, the government could become along the Ganges — the network of discharge MAPPING MOTHER GANGES worried about negative publicity and restrict outlets that release sewage and commer- The Indian government is mapping the Ganges access to some of the raw data, says Hossain, river. More than 600 million people use water cial waste water into the river. An estimated from the Ganges basin. who works at the Bangladesh University of 600 million people live in the Ganges basin, Engineering and Technology in Dhaka. In and rely on water from the river for drinking south Asia, he says, “governments are edgy and bathing. The Ganges is sacred to the coun- about failures”. try’s large Hindu population, who view the The Ganges Kumar says that the government has issued river as an embodiment of the goddess Ganga guidelines for data sharing and will share the and use its waters in religious rituals. information collected for the project. Although some sources of waste in the The mapping is part of the Indian govern- Ganges are well known, detailed models of how ment’s renewed push to use technology to pollution enters and moves along the river will monitor and clean the Ganges. In 2015, the enable officials to design more-effective reduc- government approved the 200-billion-rupee tion strategies. Environmental engineer Vinod National Mission for Clean Ganga, a wide- Tare of the Indian Institute of Technology in ranging effort that includes improving the Kanpur says that many current government treatment of sewage and reducing industrial interventions, such as diverting raw industrial pollution. sewage away from the river, are implemented and human settlements will be most affected,” But as the deadline of 2020 approaches, the without sufficient information to assess whether says Kumar. government is still a long way from meeting they are working. “Right now, we do not even The mapping project (see ‘Mapping Mother many of its targets. Last year, the independent have a simple topography of the basin,” says Ganges’) will cost 870 million rupees (US$12.7 auditor-general found that the clean-up effort Tare, who has been involved in Ganges-man- million). “It is expensive, but compared to had been delayed by financial mismanagement agement research for more than three decades. what we will be spending to address the pollu- and poor planning and implementation. Government officials also hope to use the tion problem, it is hardly anything,” says Tare. The management of the river is shaping maps to improve understanding of how cities But water-quality researcher Abed Hossain up to be a central issue in the lead-up to the develop along the riverbank, and of how the says the benefits of detailed monitoring will general election next year. Kumar says that the bank is being eroded. This will help local go unrealized if researchers cannot access all maps will be a crucial resource for future inter- governments to manage risks such as floods. the information and use it to develop models ventions. “Before planning anything, we need “We will have a better idea of what industries and interventions. If the mapping doesn’t go a map,” he says. ■

POLICY Trump finally nominates a science adviser Meteorologist Kelvin Droegemeier would lead the White House science office.

BY SARA REARDON & ALEXANDRA WITZE adviser since Congress established the OSTP you’d like to see in public service,” says Roger in 1976. “I think he is a very solid choice,” Pielke Jr, a political scientist at the Univer- S President Donald Trump has says John Holdren, who led the OSTP for sity of Colorado Boulder who has studied nominated meteorologist Kelvin eight years as Obama’s science adviser. “He the history of US science advisers and who Droegemeier as his government’s is a respected senior scientist and he has worked with Droegemeier in the 1990s and Utop scientist. If confirmed by the Senate, experience in speaking science to power.” early 2000s. “He is, in the most positive way, Droegemeier would lead the White House An expert on extreme-weather events, a nerdy meteorologist who loved working on Office of Science and Technology Policy Droegemeier has been vice-president for weather technology. And he also has a knack (OSTP). research at the University of Oklahoma in for administration and working his way Trump, who took office 19 months ago, has Norman since 2009. Last year, Oklahoma Gov- around the system.” gone longer without a top science adviser than ernor Mary Fallin, a Republican, appointed If confirmed, Droegemeier will take control has any first-term president since at least 1976. him as the state’s secretary of science and of an office radically reshaped by the Trump He announced his pick on 31 July. technology. The meteorologist has also served administration. The president has reduced the “My initial reaction is, wow, they found on the National Science Board (NSB), which number of OSTP staff members to about 50, someone,” says Kei Koizumi, visiting scholar oversees the National Science Foundation, well below the 130 employed by Obama. The at the American Association for the Advance- under presidents Obama and George Trump team has also placed greater empha- ment of Science in Washington DC and a W. Bush. Droegemeier led NSB committees sis on technology issues, and has repeatedly former assistant director at the OSTP under on hurricane science and research administra- sought to cut or eliminate high-profile science president Barack Obama. tion, among other topics, and was the board’s programmes — including a public-health- Droegemeier would be the first non- vice-chairman from 2012 to 2016. preparedness fund at the Centers for Disease physicist to serve as White House science “He combines a lot of qualities in somebody Control and Prevention, climate-change