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Hindi Research Article
Impact of Open Cast Coal Mining on Fish and Fisheries of Simsang River, Meghalaya, India
Bandita Talukdar1, Jugabrat Das2, Himangshu Kr Kalita1, Sudem Basumatary1, Hrishikesh Choudhury1 and Dandadhar Sarma1*1Department of Zoology, Gauhati University, Assam, India
2Department of Zoology, Goalpara College, Assam, India
- *Corresponding Author:
- Dandadhar Sarma
Associate Professor, Department of Zoology
Gauhati University, Guwahati-781014, Assam, India
Tel: +91 94353 14768
E-mail: sarma_dandadhar@yahoo.com
Received date: October 21, 2016; Accepted date: November 26, 2016; Published date: December 06, 2016
Citation: Talukdar B, Das J, Kalita HK, Basumatary S, Choudhury H, et al. (2016) Impact of Open Cast Coal Mining on Fish and Fisheries of Simsang River, Meghalaya, India. J Marine Sci Res Dev 6: 214. doi: 10.4172/2155-9910.1000214
Copyright: © 2016 Talukdar B. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
Abstract
Present paper deals with the impact of coal mining activities on the water quality and fish diversity of Simsang River from 2009 to 2015. Six sampling sites were selected on the basis of affected and unaffected areas of coal mining activities. Certain water quality attributes such as water colour, temperature, pH, dissolved oxygen, free CO2, chloride, total alkalinity, total dissolved solids, nitrate, ammonia, phosphate and sulphate were analysed along with the assessment of relative abundance of fishes. The estimated value of studied water quality parameters such as pH, dissolved oxygen and total alkalinity indicates degradation of water quality due to the effect of acid mine drainage (AMD) of coal mining. Polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon (PAH) showed highest concentration of 4-ring PAH and Benzo[a]anthracene was the most important pollutant in the water collected from affected sites. Relative abundance of fish diversity was also estimated less in affected area of the River. A total of 64 fish species under 20 families were collected with highest number in cyprinidae family. The calculated value of diversity indices reflected the declining trend of fish diversity in the coal mining affected areas of the river due to degradation of water quality.
