GUWAHATI, Aug 29 - The Siang has now turned virulent with unusually high waves. But the reasons behind such changes in the river, which generates the major chunk of flow of the Brahmaputra, are yet to be determined.
According to sources in the Central Water Commission (CWC), the water of the river has also become turbid.
CWC sources maintain that since the end part of July, the river is behaving in such a manner and also carrying turbid water. However, the high waves of the river are confined only to river�s reaches in Pasighat area of Arunachal Pradesh and no impact of this changed behaviour of the river is felt in the downstream areas of Assam, sources said.
It is believed that the latest turbidity of the Siang water is connected with the landslide dams that developed on the course of the river in Bayi District of China following an earthquake on November 17, 2017.
It needs mention here that following the earthquake in the Bayi District of Nyingchi County of Tibet, the Siang water turned turbid in November last year and after about two months, it subsided in January this year. Sources believe that with the rise in the rainfall activities in its upstream areas in China, the river may have got the debris deposited by the November 17, 2017 earthquake-induced landslide on its course gradually eroded.
However, to confirm this belief, scientific data are not available right at this moment, sources said.
The Chinese authorities, which are sending data on the Siang regularly, have also not mentioned any abnormal development on the course of the river within the Chinese territory, said the sources.
It is worth mentioning here that two Indian scientists working on the Brahmaputra had found three artificial, landslide-induced dams on the Yarlung Tsangpo (the Chinese name of the Siang), containing an accumulated water of around one billion cubic metres. The dams were formed following the November 17, 2017 earthquake of 6.4-magnitude that shook the Nyingchi County of Tibet.
The study of the December 10, 2017 satellite imagery captured by the European Space Agency�s Sentinel -2 undertaken by research scholars Chintan Sheth of the Bengaluru-based National Centre for Biological Research (NCBS) and Anirban Datta-Ray of the Ashoka Trust for Research in Ecology and the Environment (ATREE) had led to the conclusion that three dams were formed on the Yarlung Tsangpo, in the Bayi District of Nyingchi County of Tibet.
