Mumbai Flood Prone Areas

An interactive map that shows flood-prone areas in the Mumbai city. The map has been created based on flooding and water logging data observed in news and local sources based on Mumbai flooding incidences reported in 2005, 2015, 2017 and 2018. The red dots shows the major locations known for water logging and the pale blue polygons show the approximate extent of the water logging area based on news reporting or local knowledge.

Mumbai Overview

Mumbai, the capital of Maharashtra state of India, is a densely populated city on the western coast of Indian peninsula. A cosmopolitan metropolis, earlier known as Bombay, Mumbai is also the largest city in India. Mumbai is undoubtedly the commercial capital of India and is one of the predominant port cities in the country. Mumbai's nature, as the most heterogeneous and multicultural Indian city, is symbolized in the presence of the Bollywood industry within the city, the center of the globally-influential Hindi film and TV industries. It is also home to India's largest slum population.

Mumbai is called as an island city because of its nature of origin. It was originally a conglomeration of seven islands on the Konkan coastline, which over time were joined through land-fillings to form the island city of Greater Bombay. The city has an estimated metropolitan population of about 22.05 million in 2018, making it the 4th most populous city in the world and one of the populous urban regions in the world.

Mumbai is an efficient city in some ways, but this reputation depends on fair weather. It turns into a soggy mess with the arrival of a monsoon. This year (2018) the season has begun with the spectacular collapse of a pedestrian bridge on a crucial railway line in Andheri, causing injuries and overall urban paralysis. Not even a year has passed since the ghastly stampede on a foot over bridge at Elphinstone Road station, that took over 20 lives. The recurrent disasters involving infrastructure are proof of the indifference among policymakers to the city’s needs, even as they speak of a ‘global standard’ of living, which is highly questionable.

Mumbai Flooding Problems

Come monsoon season and Mumbai, the so called to be a global city, turns into an ugly gutter with flooding and water logging in many parts of the city, disrupting the normal life of the city to almost standstill position. There are some specific areas in the city which are highly prone to flooding and water logging; the first name that comes to this list is the Hindmata area. It’s like the epicenter of news when it rains heavily in Mumbai. Few hours of heavy rain and this place starts drowning. Apart from this places like Kurla, Sion, King Circle, Dadar, and Matunga are prone to severe flooding. Moving to the western part of the town, Juhu, Bandra, Mahim, Santacruz, and Kalina are areas where it rains a lot and these areas are also prone to fill in fast. These areas form the backbone of Mumbai, connecting the island city to its suburbs, or forming entry points to the suburbs. All these flooding and water logging cause public and private transport coming to a standstill, with loss of lives and properties.

Although, it floods every monsoon, the civic body refuses to listen to residents’ claims, said activists. As somebody says, “Mumbai will flood, it will flood every monsoon…, and there is only one reason for that, that is, the people of Mumbai and also those who rules the city…” Obviously, the people of Mumbai are responsible because they throw all their waste garbage here and there, which flows in gutter and blocks all the sewage pipes which results in water logging, and hence cause flooding Mumbai City. Similarly, the civic body is also equally responsible for these floods because of their negligence behavior, lack of planning ability, incompetent planners and engineers, and top of all, a corruption-prone and unethical mindset of the people who are responsible for management of the Mumbai civic system.

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Petroleum Production Sites of the World

An illustrative map showing petroleum production sites and their respective generalized petroleum basins occurring globally. In the map, “Oil Production Site” means the oil drills from where petroleum is recovered from the earth surface. And “Oil Field Basin” means a system of source and reservoir rocks where petroleum was formed, migrated and trapped. Click on the Oil Production Sites (red circles) or the Oil Field Basins (orange polygons) to know details about them.


Map Source and Credits:

1. Oil Production Sites (Point data): Giant Oil and Gas Fields of the World (Compiled by M.K. Horn)
2. Generalised Oil Field Basins (Polygonals): Drawn by Vinod Rowmuria, author of this blog site, taking reference from petroleum geology literatures.

What is this Map about?

Today’s world economy is driven by crude oil and the petroleum industry. Petroleum is the main source of energy till date and it is essential to maintain the present industrial civilization. Many industries run on petroleum products. And therefore its availability is a critical concern for many nations worldwide. The world has seen many wars because of this black gold.

Have you wondered how and where on this earth petroleum is produced? Going back to some basic geology, petroleum is a naturally occurring hydrocarbon material that is believed to have formed from animal and vegetable debris buried in deep sedimentary rock beds for millions of years. The petroleum, being less dense than the surrounding water, was expelled from the source beds and migrated upward through porous rock such as sandstone and some limestone until it was finally blocked by nonporous rock such as shale or dense limestone. In this way, petroleum deposits came to be trapped by geologic features caused by the folding, faulting, and erosion of the Earth’s crust. See the image below to understand the five ways how petroleum reservoirs are formed in the earth crust.

Petroleum is recovered mostly through oil drilling in the earth crust. Although natural petroleum springs or seepages are also found but such occurrences are very rare. Oil drilling comes after the studies of structural geology at the reservoir scale, sedimentary basin analysis, reservoir characterization, mainly in terms of the porosity and permeability of geologic reservoir structures. It is refined and separated, most easily by industrial distillation, into a large number of consumer products, from gasoline (petrol) and kerosene to asphalt and chemical reagents used to make plastics and pharmaceuticals. Petroleum is used in manufacturing a wide variety of materials, and it is estimated that the world consumes about 90 million barrels each day.

USA has come up as a huge contributor to the total petroleum production in the world. Its contribution amounts to almost 25% of the total production of petroleum globally. Subsequent contributors in this line of huge petroleum producing countries are Saudi Arabia, Russia, China, United Arab Emirates, etc. A complete list of countries by its petroleum production can be found here.

Petroleum is a fossil fuels. It take millions of years to form and therefore it is also considered to be a non-renewable energy source. We should use petroleum products (oil and gas) judiciously and try to save them as far as possible. Five ways how Petroleum reservoirs are formed can be understood from the self-explanatory image below. In the above map the Oil Production Sites i.e., those red circles represent the locations on the earth's surface from where the Petroleum reservoirs are accessed through sub-surface drilling to collect the crude oil from the trap shown below.

Subsurface accumulations of Oil and Gas in Reservoir

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Tectonic Plates of the Earth

A geographical map that shows the extensions of the various plate boundaries of the earth crust and the location of volcanoes at its edges. Move around the map to see the plate boundaries (shown as lines) and the location of volcanoes (show as points) across the globe.


Data Source: Plate Tectonics KML from RSOE EDIS, Volcano of the World KML from www.gelessons.com/kmzfiles/gvp_layer.kmz

Tectonic Plates of the Earth

I am a geologist by education and the topics related to earth science fascinates me a lot. Plate Tectonics is one such topic. Plate Tectonics is a scientific theory dealing with the dynamics of earth’s outer shell, the lithosphere, that revolutionized earth sciences by providing a uniform context for understanding mountain-building processes, volcanoes, and earthquakes, as well as understanding the evolution of earth’s surface and reconstructing its past continental and oceanic configurations. Here I have tried to illustrate plate tectonic through a map.

The earth's crust or the outer shell can be compared to the peel of an orange. Plate tectonics explains that this orange peel-like earth's outer shell is divided into several plates-like structures that glide over the mantle, the inner semi-viscous to solid layer of the above the core. Of course this plate-gliding movement is very slow, like 5 to 10 cm/yr, but in decades of years this speed does make impact. The lines where the plates meet are called plate boundaries. Because of the gliding movements of the plates, tremendous pressures are generated and energy is accumulated at the plate boundaries. And when these energy releases all of a sudden, earthquakes occur.

There are three main types of plate boundary: divergent, convergent and transform. At divergent boundaries, plates move away from one another leading to formation of deep oceanic trenches. At convergent boundaries, plates move towards each other leading to collusion and formation of pile of upraises, like folded mountains. At transform boundaries, plates slide pass one another leading to formation of shear zones accumulating massive frictional forces, which when released causes earthquakes. These activities also create ruptures in the earth crust, through which hot lava, volcanic ash, and gases to escape from a magma chamber below the surface, which are called volcanoes. The image below illustrates the various plate tectonic activities of the earth.

Plate Tectonics model of the Earth Crust

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Mountain Ranges of the World

A simple yet useful map that summaries and illustrates the approximate geographical extents of various mountain ranges across the surface of the earth with location of their associated major peaks. Click to expand the legend button on top-left corner of the map window and check the content details. Zoom-in or out and play around the map to check the locations. Also, click on the red triangles on the map representing the summits to see their height details from mean sea level.



Let’s go back to the school days geography class and ask this questions - where are the mountain ranges and peaks located on this earth? Well, now no need to search them one by one in the map. The above map shows all mountain peaks and ranges in one place.

Mountains are elevated land masses with peaks smaller than their base. A mountain range is a geographic area containing numerous highlands or mountain passes and valleys. Geologically explained, mountains are formed from collision of continent and upward convergence of the crust at continent edges. Mountains are of 4 types, classified based on the mode of their origin or formation: 1) Folded Mountains, 2) Block Mountains, 3) Volcanic Mountains, and 4) Relict or Residual Mountains.

Folded Mountains are formed by the crumbling or tag of crust rocks resulting in huge wrinkles and folds. These are result of earthquakes. Himalayas, Alps, Andes, etc. are the examples of folded mountains. Block Mountains formed by the lifting up of rock blocks between faults or by the sinking of the crust outside the faults. Volcanic Mountains are formed from accumulation of volcanic material that has erupted from inside the earth in the form of lava. Mount Fujiyama in Japan and Mount Visuvlus in Italy are examples of Volcanic Mountains. Relict or Residual Mountains are those which are deeply dissected and reduced by weathering and river action. All these mountain formation process are slow but gradual and takes millions and millions of years.

Now some facts about mountains. We all know that Mount Everest is the highest mountain on earth with its peak at 8,848 metres (29,029 ft) above sea level. However, that’s not exactly true. Some of the world’s tallest mountains lie mostly underwater. Mauna Kea in Hawaii rises 33,480 ft (10,205 m) from the ocean bed, which makes it taller than Mount Everest. The longest mountain chain on land is the Andes, which runs for 4,470 miles (7,200 km) down the western edge of South America. An undersea mountain chain called the Mid-Atlantic Ridge is even longer. It stretches 7,000 miles (11,300 km) down the center of the Atlantic Ocean. All major tectonic activities on earth are associated with mountain ranges in some way or other.

Nevertheless, mountainous regions are mostly tourist attractions. Mountains are generally calm and splendor places on the earth that helps us to relax. Mountains also offer us sites for outdoor activities like hiking, trekking, skiing, snowboarding, etc. People like tourists, adventure lovers (hikers, trekkers, etc.), or even general enthusiast may need to browse through the above maps to find locations of mountainous regions and summits on the earth.

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