World’s 33 major deltas are shrinking and the vast majority of those, who have experienced flooding in recent years, mainly as a result of human activity, according to a new study.
500 million people live near river deltas worldwide and number of people living over there is continuously increasing according to a study.
Human effects on deltas of the tributaries ranging from engineering and riverbeds, groundwater and the extraction of fossil fuels, trapping sediment behind dams are reducing peak flows of rivers and the various farming practices, the study said.
The findings were presented at the 2016 meeting of Ocean Sciences held in New Orleans, United States.
Deltas are areas of land created by the sediment that builds up in the mouths of the rivers entering slow moving or standing water, such as oceans and estuaries.
For the study, researchers looked at the degradation of large river deltas in the world, from the Yellow River in China to the Mississippi River in Louisiana, United States.
The two major river deltas in the United States is the delta of the Mississippi River in Louisiana and Delta Sacramento-San Joaquin River in California.
