China maps Brahmaputra, Indus for dams

Wednesday, August 24, 2011

PTI

BEIJING-- Bracing to build a number of water projects in Tibet including a dam on Brhamaputra, Chinese scientists have completed a comprehensive satellite study of cross-border Tibetan rivers determining their exact sources besides measuring the length of their drainage basins.

In this photo taken Thursday, Aug. 18, 2011, a crowd gather on a road washed out by floodwaters at Dhemaji district, in the northeastern Indian state of Assam. The sudden swelling of four tributaries of Brahmaputra River in Dhemaji has inundated about 80 percent areas in the district, as reported on Tuesday, and floodwaters submerged hundreds of villages in the district leaving thousands of families homeless. (AP Photo)

Besides mapping out the course of Brahmaputra, the photographic analysis using expeditions and satellite imagery, the researchers from the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) also collected details about the flow of Indus which flows through India and Pakistan besides Salween and Irrawaddy rivers. Salween and Irrawaddy flows through Burma.

Previously, the sources of four rivers were never clearly designated, and differing accounts regarding their lengths and drainage areas confused researchers for many years due to restrictions of natural conditions and surveying and mapping technologies, Liu Shaochuang, a researcher with the Institute of Remote Sensing Applications under the CAS, told official Xinhua news agency.

The result of their analysis and field investigations showed that the Brahmaputra River, called Yarlungzangbo in Tibetan language, originates on the Angsi Glacier, located on the northern side of the Himalayas in Burang County of Tibet not Chema-yungdung glacier, which previously identified by geographer Swami Pranavananda in the 1930s, Liu said.

The river is 3,848 km long, and its drainage area is 712,035 square km according to the new findings, while previous documents showed its length varied from 2,900 to 3,350 km and its drainage area between 520,000 and 1.73 million square kms.