An earthquake 2,500 years ago could have changed the course of studying the Ganges River India News

The Ganges originates in the Himalayas, eventually uniting with other major rivers, including the Brahmaputra and Meghna, before culminating in the Bay of Bengal. Image: Shutterstock

3 minutes to read Last updated: June 17, 2024 | 5:18 PM EST

A new study published shows that an earthquake about 2,500 years ago could have caused the Ganges to suddenly change the course of the river.

The “undocumented” earthquake, which may have had a magnitude of 7-8, changed the course of the river's main channel in present-day Bangladesh, a country vulnerable to large seismic shocks, the researchers said.

“I don't think we've ever seen such a large earthquake anywhere before,” said study co-author Michael Stickler, a geophysicist at the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory at Columbia Climatology School in the US.

“It could have easily overwhelmed anyone and anything in the wrong place at the wrong time,” Stickler said.

The study was published in the journal Nature Communications.

The Ganges originates in the Himalayas, eventually uniting with other major rivers, including the Brahmaputra and Meghna, before culminating in the Bay of Bengal. Rivers form the second largest system in the world, with the Amazon River being the largest.

Many changes in river course, called “reversals,” including some that occurred in response to earthquakes, have been documented by scientists around the world.

Similar to other rivers that pass through the greater delta, the Ganges is also known to change its course regularly. Stickler said rivers can take years or decades to change their course, but an earthquake can cause an overturn almost instantly.

The study is the “first confirmed case” of an earthquake triggering an overturn in a delta, especially for a river as massive as the Ganges, according to lead author Elizabeth L. Chamberlain, assistant professor at Wageningen University in the Netherlands.

It is a low-lying area about 1.5 km wide that can be found intermittently for approximately 100 km parallel to the current river course. They said the river is filled with mud and often floods and is mainly used for rice cultivation.

While exploring this area in 2018, researchers discovered features created as a result of earthquakes, called earthquakes.

Many of these features formed at the same time, and chemical analyzes of the sand and clay showed that a 7-8 magnitude earthquake struck the area about 2,500 years ago, they said.

They added that the earthquake could have had one of two possible sources.

One of them is the subduction zone to the south and east, where a huge plate of oceanic crust is thrusting beneath Bangladesh, Myanmar and northeastern India, the authors said.

Another possibility, they added, is that the seismic shock came from giant faults at the foot of the Himalayas to the north, which are gradually rising as the Indian subcontinent slowly collides with the rest of Asia.

A 2016 study, led by Stickler, showed that these areas increase stress and can produce earthquakes similar to those that occurred 2,500 years ago. The study estimated that about 140 million people would be affected if this happened in the modern era.

(Only the title and image of this report may have been reworked by Business Standard staff; the rest of the content is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)

Date first published: June 17, 2024 | 5:18 PM EST

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