News channels continue to devote hours to issues that received minutes of airtime a month ago; front pages still carry every twist in the investigation; and conversations naturally turn to the woman whose ashes were scattered on the Ganges last week, and to what should be done to the six men who are accused of raping her repeatedly on a moving bus before dumping her on a roadside.
Varanasi (once known as Benares) can count Mark Twain in its corner – "Benares is older than history, older than tradition, older even than legend, and looks twice as old as all of them put together," Twain said – but its claim seems to rest on the legend that it was established by Lord Shiva in 3,000BC, while all the actual evidence suggests it was founded on the Ganges 2,000 years later.
Between 1973 and 2004, about 877.90 km2 of land had been eroded along the Jamuna (Lower Brahmaputra) and 293.90 km2 along the Padma (Lower Ganges) (CEGIS 2009).
Rob Mango, Krishna Passing the Wheel of Fortune on the River Ganges 1993, oil with mixed media on canvas, 46 X 34 inches.
The allocation of AMF morphological structures can either increase or decrease depending on the timing and severity of herbivores (Gange 2007).
According to studies from elsewhere (Shah et al. 2009; Callaway et al. 2008; Tanner and Gange 2013), we hypothesize that three different mechanisms may be involved in the detected changes in the AMF community.
These results are in agreement with previous studies (Soumare et al. 2015; Ayanu et al. 2015; Zubek et al. 2016; Callaway et al. 2008; Tanner and Gange 2013) and support our hypothesis that invasive plants are associated with specific AMF species.
These earthworm casts not only contain much more organic C, nutrients, and microorganisms than the surrounding soil (Zhang and Schrader 1993; Zaller and Arnone 1997; Buck et al. 1999; Haynes et al. 2003; Aira et al. 2005) but they can also contain considerably higher numbers of arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi (AMF) spores and propagules than undigested field soil (Reddell and Spain 1991; Gange 1993).
However, excessive arsenic and salinity in groundwater adversely affects human health and threatens the yield of irrigated crops across the widespread floodplains of the Ganges (BGS/DPHE 2001; Smedley and Kinniburgh 2002; Das et al. 2009; Brammer and Ravenscroft 2009; Ravenscroft et al. 2009).
