Abstract

Hills, rivers, lakes and adjacent the Bay of Bengal are the main indicators of beauty in Chittagong city. Currently indiscriminate hill cutting is considered as one of the major environmental destructions in Chittagong city. Hill cutting problems are triggering deforestation and loss of biodiversity, local level climate change, increasing water logging and landslides. Remarkably, few researches are available to help identifying geographical distribution of hill cutting areas in Chittagong city, Bangladesh. This paper addresses this gap by conducting field investigations, observations and surveys in Chittagong city Corporation (CCC), Bangladesh. Through field investigations, observations and surveys, this research divides hilly areas in four categories. These include a) existing hilly areas, b) moderately susceptible hilly areas, c) highly susceptible hilly areas, and d) extinct hilly areas. The research suggests that there are still 40 hills in CCC which still are not affected by any hill cutting problems. The moderately susceptible hilly areas are located in Khulsi and Bayazid Bostami thanas. The highly susceptible hilly areas are located in Bayazid Bostami (11 Hills), Khulshi (10 Hills) and Kotowali thanas. The extinct hilly areas are mainly located in Panchlaish, Bayazid, Kotowali and Khulshi thanas. In order to stop hill cutting in Chittagong city, this research suggests six key areas of actions: (i) education and training, (ii) information collection and dissemination, (iii) formation of strong advisory committee, (iv) enforcement of laws by consisting of personnel from Bangladesh Army, Police, Ansar and BDP, (v) monitoring hilly areas by LiDAR DEM and (vi) formation of a monitoring committee to report strength and weakness of hill protection activities time to time.

Keywords: Geography; Hill cutting; Problem; Susceptible; Environment