As the river follows its braided 700 km (430 mi) course through the valley, it receives several rapidly flowing Himalayan streams, including the Subansiri, Kameng, Bhareli, Dhansiri, Manas, Champamati, Saralbhanga, and Sankosh Rivers.

The rivers (excepting the Manas and Lhobhrak) flow from the side of the Great Himalayas through the narrow defiles at the foot of the mountains, emerging into the Duar and eventually draining into the Brahmaputra River. In southern Bhutan the river system exhibits a dendritic pattern with tree-like branches of smaller streams meeting to form ...

With dozens of sediment-rich streams flowing south from the Himalayan highlands into the Brahmaputra Valley and an area with very high erosion rates near Namche Barwa, the Brahmaputra has one of the highest sediment loads per square kilometer of any river in the world—second only to China’s Yellow River.

The Brahmaputra River basin is spread over the four countries of China (Tibet Autonomous Region), Bhutan, India, and Bangladesh, with a total basin area of 580,000 sq. km. Of this entire area, about 50.5% lies in Tibet, 7.8% in Bhutan, 33.6% in India, and 8.1% in Bangladesh.

The middle Brahmaputra River basin in the hub of North East India below the high-standing Bhutan Himalaya has for the last 4-5 decades been observed to create a flood menace to not...