Ahmedabad's wetlands vanishing rapidly

Considering the rate at which lakes and wetlands are disappearing in Ahmedabad, the obvious villains to blame are roads, property construction, and civic amenities. A new study by researchers at Gujarat University?s department of botany, bioinformatics, and climate change impacts management reveals that the city?s lakes have been degrading and disappearing at an alarming rate. In the study conducted by Vishwa Kuchara, Charan Ronak, Archana Mankad, and Hitesh Solanki, it was observed that 50% of the 11 wetlands examined in the city had shrunk in the past 23 years, and 40% were redeveloped. The number of lakes in the city has plummeted from 603 in 1999, when the city area was 191 sq km, to just 65 today, reflecting a decline of over 80%. In 2001, the number of lakes had reduced to 137. By 2006, when the city area further expanded to 464 sq km, the count dropped further to 122. A report prepared for Auda by Cept University in 2017 revealed that 65 lakes within Ahmedabad were filled with garbage and building rubble, choked with encroachments. A recent study by the Bhaskaracharya Institute for Space Applications and Geoinformatics (BISAG) found that the lakes are shrinking at a decadal rate of 1.57 sq km.