Damodar
It rises, with its many tributaries, in
the Chota Nagpur plateau of
Jharkhand
and flows east 368 miles (592 km) through
West Bengal
to join the
Hugli River
southwest of
Kolkata
(Calcutta). Its valley includes India's most important coal- and mica-mining
fields and is an area of active industrial development.
The Damodar River Basin (DRB),
a part of the Ganges river system drained by two major river systems Damodar and
Barakar, extends over the states of Bihar and West Bengal. The basin is rich in
mineral resources, particularly coal, and has a high level of mining based
industrial and economic activity. Several urban and industrial centres exist in
the region. The result of unplanned growth in the region has led to
environmental problems related to land, water, air, noise and general standard
of living.
To study the current state of the basin and plan for its future growth, the
Ministry of Environment and Forest, Government of India, set up a
multi-institutional project with Central Mining Research Institute (CMRI),
Dhanbad, as the nodal agency. Several organisations in the government and
private sectors were involved at various stages of the project. The primary goal
of the project is to apply carrying capacity based techniques for planning the
future growth of the region. Geomatics tools such as geographical information
system and image processing packages were used as aids in the study of DRB