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May 19, 2008
Ma Ganga
This is just part of my preliminary research of documents of the Ganges River....
The Ganges River, or the Ma Ganga (mother Ganga) as the locals call it, is arguably the most important historical, religious, cultural, and biological cradle that supported the vast civilizations and the biology along its basins. It is the inexhaustible source of life and synonymous to biodiversity as it meanders its way down into the Indian Sea. Surpassing the countries of India, Nepal and Bangladesh, the Ganges River is the hallmark of biological diversity and the development of human lives in the Indian subcontinent. Consequently, the currently reported deterioration of the health of the Ganges must be assessed from the point of actually understanding the characteristics and its functions as it ties with the various different ecosystems it interacts.
The beautiful and serpentine Ganges can be summarized by the very distinctive dynamic equilibrium; it possesses the great diversity of physical, chemical and biological characteristics. These characters show from glacial and semi-tundra perspectives high up in the Himalayas to the vast Ganges delta ecosystem, where amazingly humid and tropical ecosystem supports the second most diverse Asian river next to the Mekong. Truly, the Ganges is the one of the most beautiful and highly celebrated river throughout the world. However, it also holds the infamous reputation of being the most polluted big rivers throughout the world (Dudgeon, 2000). It is in our responsibilities to be able to preserve such pristine beauty and a necessary origin of life to our progeny and let proliferate the amazing life abundance around the Ganges basins; that is how we preserve and serve “ma Ganga”.
References
-D. Dudgeon, 2000, The Ecology of Tropical Asian Rivers and Streams in Relation to Biodiversity Conservation, Annual Reviews, Annual Review of Ecology and Systematics, Vol. 31, (2000), pp. 239-263
Posted by coyojon at May 19, 2008 12:15 PM