ABSTRACT
Present paper intends to understand the impacts of spatio-temporal dynamicity of sandbars on the people who live on these ‘land pieces’, in Brahmaputra river system in Assam. The work uses a geospatial approach to calculate the morphometry of sandbars and river banks, and socio-economic studies such as questionnaire surveys and field observations. It is observed that the inhabited sandbar decreases from 3.1 to 1.2 km2 in 10 years, while the uninhabited sandbar increases from 3.2 to 6.3 km2 during the same period. Farming and wage labouring are two important livelihood options in one of the study areas. The family size here ranged between 2 and 8 with a mean of 4.7. It is observed that from an agricultural land of one bigha, the watermelon cropping can earn over Rs. 70000 annually. From the second site, it is observed that change in sandbar geometry may cause change in dwelling place in the same region resulting into change in livelihood from farming to fishing. Catching of fishes such as ‘Bolihara’ (Cabdio morar), ‘Nara’ (Labeo bata), ‘Aari’ (Sperata seenghala), ‘Hilsa’ (Tenualosa ilisha), ‘Bhorali’ (Wallago attu), ‘Bahn’ (Labeo catla) and ‘Kuhri’ (Labeo gonius) helps the community earn around Rs. 50000 to Rs. 200000 annually.
