TY - JOUR T1 - The flood-drought syndrome and ecological degradation of the Indo-Gangetic Plains of South Asia JF - Journal of Soil and Water Conservation SP - 85A LP - 90A DO - 10.2489/jswc.2022.1006A VL - 77 IS - 6 AU - Rattan Lal Y1 - 2022/11/01 UR - http://www.jswconline.org/content/77/6/85A.abstract N2 - The Indo-Gangetic Plains (IGPs), covering 70 million ha (172 million ac), span from the Indus River in Pakistan to the Punjab Plains in India and Pakistan, to the Haryana Plains and Ganges Delta in Bangladesh (figure 1). The IGPs are among the world’s most fertile lands, comprising the densely populated region of the Indian subcontinent (Mani 1974). The IGPs include two drainage basins: the western region drains to the Indus and the eastern part to the Ganges-Brahmaputra drainage system. Major rivers of the IGPs are Indus with its five tributaries (Sutlej, Ravi, Beas, Chenab, and Jhelum), Ganges (along with Yamuna), and Brahmaputra. The IGPs are the world’s most extensive alluvial formations, intensively farmed areas, and the seat of the Green Revolution of the 1960s and 1970s. Annual rainfall increases from west to east, and the climate ranges from arid to humid. The total population of the IGPs is over 900 million people (Biemans 2019), who also raise the world’s largest livestock population (Teufel et al. 2010).Figure 1 The geographical extent of the Indo-Gangetic Plains of South Asia (adapted from IIT [2022]).The Green Revolution and the attendant agricultural intensification have addressed the issues of food and nutritional security (Davis et al. 2018; von der Goltz et al. 2020) but aggravated the ecological degradation. Among numerous examples of ecological degradation are air pollution from the burning of rice (Oryza sativa L.) straw in October through November (Shyamsundar et al. 2019), severe soil degradation because of land misuse and soil mismanagement (Bhattacharyya et al. 2015), eutrophication and contamination of water by agricultural chemicals (Sarker et al. 2021; Sunam and … ER -