Born from erosion: Canyon Bommayapalayam is known in local language as ‘Semmanodai’ (a red Rivuleto) in Vanur Taluk. The ravine, a narrow and deep valley with steep sides, has an average height of 7 meters, a width or 30 meters. | Photo credit: SS Kumar
As nature changes the color palette, the landscape is transformed from interspersed to a mahogany strip, shortly after the left turn in Bommayapalayam, eight kilometers on the road from the east coast of Puducherry to Chennai. A inclined dirt road gives way to the brown red scarlets of Canyon Bommayapalayam, known in the local language as “Semmanodai” (a red stream) in the Vanur Taluk or Villupuram district. Beyond the last pairs of housing on this site, there is an unequal and resistant terrain that alternates between vegetation patches and earth bars, escarpes and narrow ravines.
The cannon is part of a variety of ravines that border the bio-region of Auroville. These ravines were formed for centuries of reduction of water currents of the monzonic rain transporting fragments of earth and rock to the Bengal Bay. The Government of Tamil Nadu recently announced a plan to protect the cannon, believed it was a geological data deposit that dating centuries, declaring the formation of the ravine with the Reddish land as a Geo-Heritage site.
Improvement of understanding
The plan also aims to improve the understanding of dynamic geological processes between students and scientists. According to the officials of the College of Villupuram, the proposal, floated for the first time in May 2022 by the then collector to the Geology and Mining Commissioner, recommended protection and maintenance of the Ravine Formation. The ravine, a narrow and deep valley with steep sides, has an average height of 7 meters, a width or 30 meters. It goes back to the age of the Miocene that is estimated in the range of 23.03 to 5.33 million years.
A preliminary inspection was carried out by a team led by the Regional Joint Director of Geology and Mining. “A detailed proposal will be presented to the Government through the Geology and Mining Commissioner in Chennai,” said an official. The Public Works Department will be the implementation agency.
“The cannons are the cumulative result of the result of years of soil erosion, instead of any tectonic activity,” said Deepika Kundaji, a student conservation of national wells and seed winners in Auroville. Unlike the appearance of a geological formation or a bare hill, the cannon is sculpted with eroded earth. It is important from a geological perspective, because the ridges formed from long periods of soil erosion can reveal terrestrial truths. The analysis of the strata in the ridges or fossils of the species of plants now extinct can dig up important geological information, said Mrs. Kundaji, recipient of the Nari Shakti Puracsar 2017.
When it was created in 1968, Auroville inherited a bars plateau about 50 meters above sea level that remained as will for raptor deforestation at least since the 18th century. The region, with the presence of limestone, bauxite and iron mineral, was vulnerable to the rapid erosion of the soil and a greater loss of biodiversity, given the proximity to a variety of cannons. From the first days, Auroville planners, especially their conservation experts, have mapped and studied the topography of bio-region. All the rainfall of the plateau reaches the Bengal Bay, only runs along the different routes from the three main basins in the Auroville region: the Pitchandikulam-Bommayapalayam area that leans directly towards the sea, the tank Irumbai Lake-Kazhuitli and the Osteri lake that is located west.
Measures to verify erosion
At approximately the years, the collective action results in a series of counter-erosion measures, ranging from the planting of mission mode to the construction of checkdams and bunds to judge the flow of water and facilitation of soil regeneration. “The erosion of the upper layer of the soil has decreased,” said Aul, whose family has been living near the ravines for about four decades. The water extracted from the manual pumps is potable and the soil is fertile to grow fruits such as mangoes, fragments and apples of water that are more succulent, he said. “There was a time not too long ago when the cannon served as a picnic place, a hiking route and, only as a film for action scenes or song sequences. However, there are fewer visitors these days,” he said. If something could be worse than abandoning a site rich in geology due to the ravages of nature, it is to allow the unregulated entry of hikers who leave the garbage; In some places there are glass fragments of beer bottles shattered by rebel types. “It is imperative that cannon sites are protected and regenerated to offer a more educational and less recreational experience,” said Mrs. Kundaji.
Canyon are often compared to silent magazines of the evolution of a land in long periods. The thought caused by natural causes, the formations similar to the cliffs that arise from the Earth are also emblematic of the environmental destruction caused by man already long term.
Turbulent
The Bommayapalayam canyon sits in a form of relief that has witnessed a adjusted turbulent: o Kings at war, the superimposed influence of Anglo-French imperialism; And reckless booty of natural resources that cause the long -term environmental cost. Write in the August 2023 edition of Auroville todayMrs. Kundaji establishes a connection between the political history of the region and ecological devastation for centuries. According to him Gazette or PondicherryIn 1703 “Francois Martin, who acquired the Kalapet village, then famous for her wood, by Nawab Dawood Khan, it is reported that she used the wood of her forest to build houses in the city of newly founded by Havines in Postrib. Delete.”
Mrs. Kundalji acknowledges that soil erosion results in the formation of the cannon is the most extreme and irreversible way of descent of the Earth. “The shoulder of the cannons as a reminder of the types of land deposits lost by erosion on millenia.”
Published – April 10, 2025 10:23 PM IST