Bal Krishna Patidar
Department of Geology, Barkatullah University,
India
Email: [email protected]
Andrew Menezes
National Institute of Oceanography
The Bay of Bengal is a northern extended arm of the Indian Ocean, situated in eastern part between equator and 220N latitude and 800E and 1000E longitude. It is a tropical basin, landlocked in the north by the landmasses of India and Bangladesh and the deltaic region of the Ganges-Brahmaputra-Meghna river system, in the east by the Myanmar peninsula and Indonesian archipelago, and in the west by peninsular India and east coasts of Sri Lanka. The southern boundary of the Bay is in contact with southern ocean. The Bay occupies an area of about 2.2 million sq km and average depth is 2,600m with a maximum depth of 5,258m. The winds over the Bay of Bengal (BoB) undergo seasonal changes from north-easterly (November-February) during winter to south-westerly (June-September) during summer monsoon. In response to these winds, the environmental/oceanographic characteristics of the BoB also will undergo seasonal changes. In addition, the large amount of refresh water brought by the rivers such as Ganges, Brahmaputra, Irawady, Mahanadi, Krishna, Godavari and Kaveri adjoining the BoB also will play a major role in the hydrographic characteristics. Hence the present study aims at understanding the seasonal variability of the environmental parameters of BoB.Geographical Information System (GIS) and Remote Sensing of the environment are of great importance due to growing concern on environmental studies. The present study focus on the application of Geographical Information System (GIS) and remote sensing for the analysis of environment parameters of Bay of Bengal. The remote sensing data, used in the study, are Sea Surface Temperature (SST), Sea Surface Height (SSH) anomalies, Chlorophyll Concentration and Sea Surface Wind. The monthly mean data on SST is from Modis Aqua, chlorophyll pigment concentrations is from SeaWiFS, and sea surface winds from Quikscat. Monthly mean sea surface height anomalies were obtained merged 7-day snap shot from Topex/Posidon and ERS-1/2 series of satellites. The spatial resolution of all the data is 0.3degree in latitude and longitude. The data used for the present study is from January 2002 to December 2005. These data were analyzed using GIS to determine the seasonal and inter-annual variability. GIS facilitates the modeling and analysis of data apart from generation of both 2-D and 3-D maps.Preliminary analysis showed that SST and chlorophyll pigment concentrations were correlated with cold SSTs located with high chlorophyll pigment concentrations. However, in the northern Bay the pigment concentration was always high and appears to be related to the influence of river discharge. Mainly high chlorophyll concentration was found near the coastal areas of Bay of Bengal, so these areas may become biologically highy productive.
