Long Term Shoreline Oscillation and Changes of Cauvery Delta Coastline Inferred from Satellite Imageries

Abstract

Coastal zone is highly volatile ecosystem which is always in adjustments. Loss of shore line will cause severe impact on human life and as well as their properties. Remote sensing is a reliable technique to study the historical shoreline changes. Therefore in this paper long term shoreline oscillations of Cauvery delta shorelines at Poompuhar, Tharangambadi and Nagapattinam were studied using satellite imageries and the same was physically observed at the above three locations with the help of  reference pillars and compared mutually. It was observed that the shoreline at Poompuhar is under accretion at the rate of 1.79m/ Year and other shoreline stretches at Tharangambadi and Nagapattinam were under erosion at 0.4888m/ Year and 0.4985m/ Year respectively. It was also observed that the remote sensing study qualitatively matches with the physical observation for all the three coastal stretches of the study area.