A Bridge to Prosperity: Hydraulic and Scour Analyses of the Ganges River Crossing at Paksey, Bangladesh

One of the world's most densely populated nations, Bangladesh is also one of the poorest. More than 125 million people live within this South Asian country's total area of 144,000 km² (about the size of Wisconsin), which amounts to an average of 868 persons per square kilometer (or almost 2,250 persons per square mile.) Rivers are the most important geographical features of Bangladesh. Alluvial river plains, which dominate 90% of the country,are very flat, never rising more than 10 m above sea level. The two great rivers of the Indian subcontinent, the Ganges and Brahmaputra, divide Bangladesh into six major regions, which correspond to the six governmental divisions. The Ganges, which drains the southern slopes of the Himalayas, enters Bangladesh from the northwest and is joined by the Brahmaputra in the center of the country to form the world's third largest river, after the Amazon and Congo. The Ganges and Brahmaputra Rivers both receive new names once they pass into Bangladesh: the Ganges becomes the Padma, while the Brahmaputra is known as the Jamuna. South of the capital city Dhaka the lower Padma joins the Meghna River, which flows from the northeast. Lower reaches of the Meghna expand in width to around eight km during the wet season, and much more during large floods. The combined river delta is the largest in the world, beginning more than 320 km from the Bay of Bengal.