College of Education and Behavioral Sciences News

Dr. Nahid Gani, Associate Professor of Geology in the Department of Earth, Environmental and Atmospheric Sciences, is making an impact on the knowledge of the Bengal Delta, a river delta in the Bengal region of South Asia that consists of Bangladesh and the Indian state of West Bengal, by leveraging high-resolution Sentinel-1 satellite images using the Interferometric Synthetic Aperture Radar (InSAR) technique. This data is instrumental to understanding the effect of sea-level rise driven by global climate change.

Gani’s project on the Spatial and Temporal Modeling of Land Subsistence in Bangladesh, one of the most densely populated countries in the world and the world’s largest delta region, aims to estimate and map land subsistence, which is the vertical movement or sinking of the Earth’s surface. It is caused by natural events as well as human activity.

The Bengal Delta is very familiar to Gani. “I have done research in this area in the past, which invigorated the start of one of my other current research projects in this location to see the river network’s response to the ongoing tectonic activity. Niroj Shrestha, a graduate teaching and research assistant in my lab, and I just completed this river research, which extensively conducted satellite image analysis,” Gani said.

The river research results spurred her to engage in further geoscientific investigation of the area by using available satellite data.

“I truly feel and realize the consequences of climate change the Delta is facing today,” Gani said. “The area is particularly vulnerable to the sea-level rise, coastal flooding in major cities, land loss and biodiversity loss resulting from subsidence. This threatens the security of the Delta’s economy, population and infrastructure. The results of the research will be critical to informing sustainable land-use decisions and better environmental management.”

Gavin Middleton is a graduate student studying Geoscience in Gani’s Landscape Geodynamics (LeGo) lab. The research is the focus of the master’s thesis he is currently developing. Gani said she hopes the research contributes to global awareness within the WKU student body and allows students to become informed about a global climate change issue due to the rising sea level. Middleton and other students involved in the research are gaining an applied-learning experience in land subsistence using cutting-edge techniques. The knowledge gained at WKU could be used as a proxy for other river deltas around the world, such as the Mississippi Delta in Louisiana.

For more information about the WKU Department of Earth, Environmental, and Atmospheric Sciences, visit www.wku.edu/eeas.