Spatial Distribution of the Suspended Sediments in River Ganga at Varanasi, Uttara Pradesh, India

This paper deals with the preliminary evaluation of the grain size distribution of suspended particles in River Ganga at bend of Varanasi city. Suspended sediments samples were collected from 14 locations along the river and 3 locations across the river. These were analyzed for grain size distribution characteristics. The results indicated a wide variation of sediment particle size across the river but less variation along the river. The increase of grain size of sediments at different locations along the river is responsible for the erosion of the left bank along the ghat side of river Ganga. The erosion at these locations has been verified by the depth profile obtained by ADCP. In addition, the distribution of suspended sediments in each sampling point shows much greater variability across the river and less variation along the river. Results drawn from this study have an important repercussion for gaining understanding of the behaviour of suspended sediment properties.