ABSTRACT
Bangladesh is located between 20° to 26° north and 88° to 92° east. It is bounded on the west, north and east by India, on the south-east by Myanmar and on the south by the Bay of Bengal. Most of the country is low-lying land, mainly the delta of the Ganges and Brahmaputra rivers. Flood plains occupy 80 per cent of the total country. Mean elevations of flood plain range from less than 1 m on the tidal flood plains, 1 to 3 m in the main river and estuarine flood plain, and up to 6 m in the Sylhet basin in the north-east (Rashid 1991). Only in the extreme north-west, elevations are greater than 30 m above the mean sea level. The north-east and south-east areas of the country are hilly with some tertiary hills over 1,000 m above mean sea level (Huq and Asaduzzaman 1999).
