Mission of Sylvie in India, 2018
Video made on the island of Mossouni at the mouth of the Hooglie river (Ganges arm) in West Bengal, India.
Mission of Céline in Bangladesh, 2020
The target of this part of the project is to resurvey 55 geodetic monuments in southeast Bangladesh built up by the Survey of Bangladesh (SoB) 20-30 years ago. We survey the sites with precise GPSs during 24-36 h. The main target is to estimate the change of land elevation with a good spatial coverage (monuments are ~ 20 km apart). The overall goal is to be able to determine the coastal subsidence in the region over the last 20 years. This is very critical to determine the present relative sea level rise in southeast Bangladesh.
During the first part of the field experiment, we worked on the sites near Barisal and Kuakata. We were 2 different teams (with our Bengali colleagues from the Institute of Water Modelling, SoB, Dhaka and Barisal Universities, Michael Steckler and myself). Then, most of the colleagues left and Hasnat Jamal’s students form Barisal University, and myself continues the campaign. We build up two teams and once we finished the work near Barisal, we move to Khulna for surveying the sites in this region. We also took the opportunity to be there for servicing the permanent GPS station deployed during the Band-Aid project in Paigasha with the support of colleague from IWM. The last site we did where at only few kilometers from the world largest protected mangrove forest: the Sundarbans. Hasnat and his students finish the 11 stations in the forest after I left.
The overall campaign was a large success. We have been able to survey 44 sites over my stay. Also, some monuments where in better shape than others, few where in the middle of latrine, some others where totally covered by trees and even after large tree cut the data are not very good. Some roads were complicated, some lines for taking ferryboat look infinite, but some rickshaw vans were super-efficient to reach some isolated sites.
Before going back in La Rochelle, I did few meetings in Dhaka, and service the other permanent station deployed during the Band-Aid project in Chittagong. I had the chance to meet Frank Gruetzmacher, the Deputy Head of Mission of the French Embassy in Dhaka. He provide critical helps and advises for scholarship applications for few Bengali students who join our Master program in La Rochelle, this semester (pictures?)! Then, I left Dhaka the day after the first CoVid case was declared officially in Bangladesh.