Quantifying long-term nutrient sources and pathways in the Ganges River basin

The Ganges River basin is home to more than 600 million people. Intensive agriculture is widespread owing to the basin’s widespread fertile soils and abundant water availability. Together with urbanization and industrialization which have grown rapidly over the past decades across the basin, this has significantly impacted the river’s water quality with adverse impacts on human health and ecosystem. Elevated nutrient levels in the Ganges River, mainly from intensive agricultural practices and discharge of untreated wastewater, have led to surface and groundwater pollution across the basin. In this study, we employ the spatially explicit Integrated Model to Assess the Global Environment-Dynamic Global Nutrient (IMAGE-DGNM) to investigate nutrient sources and pathways and their fate in the Ganges river system. Basin-wide simulation results over the past five decades (1970-2020) will be presented and analysed along with discussions on the implication of nutrient pollution on the water quality of the Ganges River.