Field Note 03: The Ledger of the Chars

“The land belongs to the river first, and the paper second.”

In Chauhali Upazila, regular erosion routinely swallows cadastral survey pillars (মৌজা পিলার). When land re-emerges five years later across the stream, traditional satellite cadastral mapping cannot resolve conflicting claims without historical oral testimony.

We tested an experimental participatory GIS system where village elders record verbal micro-toponym histories tied to immutable timestamped cryptographic hashes.

This methodology safeguards displaced farming families from predatory land grabs during post-monsoon resettlement.