What is the largest river delta in the world?

The Ganges-Brahmaputra Delta is the largest river delta in the world.

Also called the Ganges Delta, Bengal Delta or Sundarbans Delta, it spreads across Bangladesh and the Indian state of West Bengal before emptying into the Bay of Bengal. It is built from enormous quantities of sediment carried down from the Himalayas by the Ganges, Brahmaputra and Meghna river systems.

The delta is a constantly shifting maze of distributaries, mudflats, islands and tidal channels. In Bangladesh, the Ganges is known as the Padma, while the Brahmaputra is called the Jamuna. Their waters eventually join the Meghna before reaching the sea.

The region is exceptionally fertile and supports hundreds of millions of people, but it is also highly vulnerable to monsoon flooding, riverbank erosion and tropical cyclones. The Sundarbans, the world’s largest mangrove forest, occupies the delta’s tidal southwestern section. The Mississippi, Amazon and Nile each form important deltas, but none matches the Ganges-Brahmaputra system in overall size.