Mt. Kailash: origin of the rivers of India

I've posted about Tibet several times on this blog. I found this interesting post via Facebook:

#TBT Red River Delta

Originally published on 2017-03-25

Cross-border riverine issues have long been of interest to me. In 1995, my husband and I visited Assam and even took a rafting trip on one of the Brahmputra's tributaries. In 1998, I had the privilege of going to Tibet, where I traveled along the Yarlung Tsangpo River, as the river is known in its upper reaches.

Last month, the East-West Center in Washington, DC hosted a seminar on The Upstream Superpower: China’s Transboundary River Policies, presented by Dr. Selina Ho of the National University of Singapore. The entire seminar is presented below (apologies for the video quality, but that’s what E-W Center provided):



An audience member raised the issue of the Red River, which flows through China and Vietnam. Naturally, I had to launch ArcMap to create a map. You may see the map of the Red River Delta and find information about how I created the map on the Bahu of Bengal Facebook page.

UNESCO has designated the Red River Delta as a biosphere reserve notable for mangroves and intertidal habitats.

Kaveri River dispute

The recent MLA election in Karnataka obscured pressing issues such as water. I stepped in to create maps of rivers.

Rivers of India

I champion open principles: open data, open software, and open standards.

Natural Earth is a public domain map dataset that provided data layers for shaded relief, internal administrative boundaries (states),water bodies, waterways, and populated places. The datasets are available at 1:10m, 1:50m, and 1:110 million scales. I chose datasets at 1:10 million, the most detailed that Natural Earth provides.

I processed the layers in QGIS, which is built on top of and is Free and Open Source Software (FOSS). QGIS uses the GNU General Public License (GNU GPL).The Free Software Foundation sponsors the GNU Operating System. FOSS software licenses grant the users rights to modify and re-use software product.

At the India extent, I applied labels for the states. Going on the premise that named waterways are more significant than unnamed waterways, I created separate layers for named and unnamed waterways. The named waterways were portrayed with a thicker line, while the unnamed waterways were portrayed in a lighter blue color and a thinner line. 

I also created separate layers for rivers with a specified width and rivers with an unspecified width.  Those rivers that had a specified width were deemed more important than those that didn't: likewise, they had a thicker line.

Kaveri River

I then selected administrative boundaries for Goa,Karnataka, and Tamil Nadu; saved them to a new layer; and zoomed in on the layer.In addition to labeling the states, I labeled populated places. Natural Earth favors regional significance over population census in selecting populated places. I also selected segments for the Kaveri River (waterways named Kaveri), saved them to a new layer, and styled the layer with a thick blue line.

Sources:

Front Page - Free Software Foundation - working together for free software. (n.d.). Retrieved May 16, 2018, from https://www.fsf.org/

GNU Operating System. (n.d.). Retrieved May 16, 2018, from http://www.gnu.org/

Natural Earth. (n.d.). Retrieved May 16, 2018, from http://www.naturalearthdata.com/

QGIS. (n.d.). Retrieved May 16, 2018, from https://www.qgis.org/en/site/

Rivers of India with Landsat imagery

Here is another map I created of the rivers of India, this time with Landsat imagery:

You may download the map of the rivers of India in JPEG format or the map of the rivers of India in PDF format. Alternatively, if you would like to play around with the map itself, download the ArcMap document showing the rivers of India.

Tales from River Brahmaputra

Source: amazon.com via Julie on Pinterest

Namaste, 

I'm only on page 60, and Tales from River Brahmaputra by Tiziana Baldizzoni is already proving to be a better book than Rivers of India. It has a superior pressing and stunning photos. It's easy to overlook the text, which is filled with lore about the Brahmaputra.

It seems to be a little thin on the coverage of the river's course through India.

Reproductions of antique maps are provided on the back side of the front and back covers.

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Rivers of India

Rivers of India by Sunil Vaidyanathan
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

Cheap pressing. Simplistic text. Single fold-out map features rivers symbolized with thick blue lines. Would have liked more detailed maps for each of the chapters.


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OK, I would have liked better maps, so I created my own with data in ArcMap, using free data from Esri:

Rivers of India

The map has been formatted to a standard 8.5" x 11" sheet (US).

You may download the JPEG image of Rivers of India or the PDF file of Rivers of India from Google Drive.  One problem is the overprint of place names, but I couldn't toggle the options on and off. :-(

Alternatively, if you would like to play around with the data itself download the Rivers of India ArcMap document (.mxd). 

Review of Water: Asia's New Battleground

Water: Asia's New Battleground by Brahma Chellaney
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This is an ambitious, nay, overly ambitious book. Brahma Chellaney covers inter- and intra-state water conflicts across Asia (including the Middle East!)

Riverine issues have interested me since I traveled along the Tsangpo-Brahmaputra River in Tibet and India. No wonder why Tibet matters so much to China: by controlling Tibet, China controls the headwaters of the great rivers of Asia. Chellaney devotes a whole chapter to the Tibetan Plateau. Sadly, but in time-honored Indian fashion, India ceded its advantages to India.

The maps in this book are not particularly useful and illustrative of the text.

Water: Asia's New Battleground won the 2012 Asia Society Bernard Schwartz Book Award.

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