Flooding In Bangladesh.

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Alex Day                                                                    5/11/2001

.Flooding In Bangladesh.

Bangladesh is in southern Asia, bordering the Bay of Bengal between India and Burma. Bangladesh is an extremely poor and a country that is prone to extreme devastating floods. The geography of Bangladesh does not help either. The population of Bangladesh is 131,269,860 and the total area of the country is 144 thousand square kilometres this works out to be a 900 people to a square kilometre. 82 percent of these people are distributed in rural areas and 18 percent of these people are distributed in urban areas. Bangladesh’s terrain is mostly flat and slightly hilly in the southeast. The climate in Bangladesh is normally mild in the winter months (October to march) and hot and humid in the summer months (march to June) then in the months of June through October the climate is humid and warm with lots of rain, this is the time of the year that the monsoon takes place. The land in Bangladesh is used in 4 main ways. Arable 73%, permanent crops 2%, permanent pastures 5%, forests and woodlands 15% and the other 5% is in other ways. 31,000 square kilometres of Bangladesh is irrigated. Bangladesh is prone to many natural hazards such as; cyclones, draughts and of course floods.

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The floods in Bangladesh are due to a few main factors, which are coastal flooding, river flooding, tidal surges, deforestation, erosion and the monsoon. The annual rainfall in Bangladesh is approximately 1250 mm in the west of the country and about 5500 mm in the north east, and this normally takes place in the months of June through October. Bangladesh has a coastline of 580 Km. Coastal flooding counts to a lot of the flooding in Bangladesh. Erosion of the riverbanks causes the banks to burst and flood certain areas, when the river levels are high, this can cause ...

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