Assessing the status of changing regimes of water bodies in Gorakhpur District, Uttar Pradesh, India.

Water bodies play a very important role in maintaining and restoring the ecological balance, but they are one of the most threatened habitats in the world. Anthropogenic intervention is changing the regimes of wetlands almost everywhere particularly in the developing countries. Gorakhpur District is dotted with many big and small flood plain-related water bodies like rivers, streams, tanks, dead arms, oxbow lakes, etc. Some of these water bodies are worst affected and are degraded by encroachment for agriculture and other economic and developmental activities. Channel migration, aggravated by human intervention, on alluvial plain is also very frequent, which has direct impact on the nature of water bodies and land use transformations of the region. In this paper, the authors have made an attempt to (a) bring current geographical and historical background of water bodies/wetlands for the district. It aims to assess long-term (1917-2018) and short-term (pre- and post-monsoon) changes in the water bodies of Gorakhpur District; (b) provide changes in the regime of water bodies/wetlands and their conversion to different types of land use/land cover classes due to human intervention and due to annual rainy season, which inundates a large extent of the area every year; (C) assess the channel characteristics and morphometric analysis of main rivers of the region during the last hundred years. Remote sensing and Geographical Information System (GIS) have been used to prepare the inventory and to perform change detection, using land use/land cover maps. The floodplain areas of water bodies have almost changed their morphological characters due to encroachment by the nearby areas. Canals, drainage channels, and lakes are the most affected water bodies in the region, which have recorded - 65.38% and 43.37% loss in their area. Even permanent rivers have recorded a decrease of - 16.96% in the area. As per the seasonal change, agriculture land suffered the greatest conversion (18.33%) due to floodwater inundation. The study provides a platform to planners to chalk out their policies and also for monitoring the water bodies. Furthermore, analysis on channel migration will help predict the future course of the main rivers.