The Jamuna-Brahmaputra River

The Jamuna River, Brahmaputra-Jamuna is one of the three main rivers of Bangladesh and is the second largest river in Bangladesh and one of the largest in the world, with its basin covering areas in Tibet, China, India and Bangladesh. Actually Jamuna is the downstream course of the Yarlung Tsangpo or Tsangpo-Brahmaputra River. This River is a trans-boundary river and one of the major rivers of Asia. This river originates in the Jima Yangzong glacier near Mount Kailash in the northern Himalayas.

From its origin in southwestern Tibet as the Yarlung Tsangpo River, it flows across southern Tibet to break through the Himalayas in great gorges and into Arunachal Pradesh (India). Here in this place this river is known as Dihang. Afterward it flows southwest through the Assam Valley as the name great Brahmaputra and afterward south through Bangladesh as the Jamuna River.

 

Here in Bangladesh after passing the country India the Tsangpo-Brahmaputra River merges with the Ganges to form a vast delta, the Sunderbans. Sunderbans is the world largest river Delta. About 1,800 miles (2,900 km) long, the river is an important source for irrigation and transportation. The average depth of river is 395 feet (120 m) and maximum depth is 1,088 feet (332 m). The Jamuna River is the main channel of the Brahmaputra River when it flows out of India into Bangladesh. In Bangladesh, the Brahmaputra splits into two branches: the much larger branch continues due south as the Jamuna and flows into the Lower Ganges, locally called Padma while the older branch curves southeast as the lower and flows into the Meghna. Both paths eventually reconverge near Chandpur in Bangladesh and flow out into the Bay of Bengal. The total length of the Tsangpo-Brahmaputra-Jamuna River from its origin up to its confluence with the Ganges at the Sunderbans is about 2,700 km. Within Bangladesh territory, Brahmaputra-Jamuna is 276 km long, of which Jamuna is 205 km.

The Jamuna-Brahmaputra River was a major barrier in establishing a direct road communication between capital Dhaka and Rajshahi Division, the northern part of Bangladesh, until 1996. This was mitigated by the completion of the Jamuna Multi-Purpose Bridge.

The width of the Jamuna-Brahmaputra River varies from 3 km to 18 km but the average width is about 10 km. In the rainy season the river is nowhere less than five kilometres broad.

The River Jamuna is braided in nature. Within the braided portion of the Jamuna, there are no’s of chars of different sizes. A Landsat image taken on the year 1992 dry season shows that the Jamuna contained a total of 56 large islands chars, each longer than 3.5 km. There were an additional number of 226 small island chars, varying in length between 0.35 and 3.5 km. 

The Jamuna River has four major tributaries: the Dudhkumar, the Dharla, the Tista and the Karatoya-Atrai system. The Dudhkumar, Dharla and Tista Rivers are flashy in nature, rising from the steep catchment on the southern side of the Himalayas between Darjeeling in India and Bhutan. Of all the tributaries, the Tsangpo-Brahmaputra is the longest and was actually the course of the present Brahmaputra.