Temporal and spatial variations in the engineering properties of the sediments in Ramganga River, Ganga Basin, India

Development of infrastructure needs enormous natural Earth materials in the form of coarse and fine river aggregate materials. In India, flood plains of the Himalayan Rivers serve as an important source of river sand, leading to extensive sand mining. River Ramganga, the first major tributary of River Ganga, is one such river. In this study, 28 samples of river sediments across the stretch of the river were collected over two seasons: pre-monsoon and monsoon. The engineering properties of these sediments were studied with respect to the specifications of the Bureau of Indian Standards (BIS) and the American Society for Testing and Materials (ASTM) to understand the suitability of their use as fine aggregates in construction. An attempt has also been made in this study to correlate the variability of these properties with respect to the location and time of collection to the Ramganga River Dam at Kalagarh, the contribution of major tributaries, and the effect of monsoon. A pattern emerges from the variation of the physical properties that is explicable by these factors, whereas in general, the variation of the chemical properties does not follow a regular pattern.