A team of scientists from the Birbal Sahni Institute of Palaeosciences, Lucknow, have been camping near the famous Kabar lake in Begusarai district of Bihar since last week to study the kind of climate and seasonal variations that were there in our country nearly 40,000 years ago, a member of the team said.
The team has been collecting samples of sediments at Kabar as part of the study commissioned by the ministry of science and technology on climate change, seeking to know why and how the climate in the Indian subcontinent has been changing in the last 40,000 years.
For the study, altogether 12 lakes from seven states of the country — Bakhira Taal, Lahuradewa lake at Sant Kabir Nagar and Katkui lake in Amroha in Uttar Pradesh, Kabar in Begusarai, Ramgarh Crater Sagar Taal in Rajasthan, Bada Taal and Sapna Jheel in Madhya Pradesh, Buka Taal in Chhattisgarh, Orhu lake and the Vindhyabas lake in Haryana and Lonar in Maharashtra — have been chosen.
The Kabar lake is the first and the only Ramsar site in Bihar. Spread over 2,620 hectares of land in Begusarai, the lake has been a habitat for a wide variety of plants, birds and zooplanktons.
“We have started our research work from Kabar. In fact, this lake has been learnt to be the most undiluted site. It has least human interference,” Dr Prasanna, senior scientist at the BSTP, said.
“There have been prolonged summers while winters are extremely cold and sometimes there is excess rainfall in our country. Efforts are underway find past records of weather variations witnessed here. But limited records in this connection have been available. The mission has especially been concerned about the inadequate understanding of the processes of climate change and the impacts of global warming,” he said.
“Lakes hold the sedimentary records of past changes witnessed in continental climate. Sediments from around the surrounding environment accumulate in the lakes, which turn out to be the storehouse of high resolution history of local environmental conditions in the past,” he said.
Dr Vineeta, assistant coordinator of the research team from BSIP, said the samples of sediments collected from Kabar lake would be put to various kinds of tests to ascertain composition of soil in the area, the kind of plant varieties, how these plants and trees originated and survived the changes in weather conditions and how many of these disappeared,” she said.
Dr Prasanna said sample collection at Kabar lake would be over in this week. “Our next destination will be the lakes in Haryana,” he said.
This is a five- year project and in the first phase areas in northern parts of the country will be covered, he said.
