bangladesh

• bangladesh is the most flood prone country in the world
• Bangladesh has some of the most fertile soil in the world because silt was deposited a long time ago and the climate has enough water and high temperatures
• they mostly grow wheat, maize and sugarcane
• bangladesh are the 4th largest producer of rice
• a belt of onshore winds bring monsoon season
• in times of intense rainfall they can get up to 1m of rain a day
• the bangladesh river basin is 1.7 million square kilometers in size
• bangladesh has 3 large rivers called brahmaputra, ganges and mehgna
• the river basin originates in the himilayas
• the rivers flow through pakistan, nepal, china and india before bangladesh
• bangladesh is very low lying and half the country is less than 12m above sea level
• 20% of the country is flooded each year
• in 1971 15 million people lived in bangladesh, in 2010, 150 million people lived there
• there is lots of deforestation because wood is used for cooking but is also the main building supply
• when it rains there is less interception if there are fewer trees and less evapotranspiration which means there is more water in the rivers
• irrigation and increased ploughing in nepal and china creates more silt which gets washed off the land and deposited downstream in Bangladesh, causes the rivers to silt up and raises the level of the river bed and reduces the rivers capacity for water
• the melting glaciers in the Himalayas will be completely melted by 2035
• 50 million bangladeshi's live below the poverty line
• being poor means it takes longer to recover after the floods and you are more likely to be on marginal lands prone to flooding
• char islands are created in the middle of rivers when it becomes choked with sediment, people will farm on them until the next major flood
• farmers are encouraged to diversify into things that arent affected by flooding
• NGOs work with local farmers to help them by giving people loans and training
• people have now been able to buy houses and send their children to schools
• examples of this are faruks fish, moshiurs pumpkins and noors superducks