Application of Geospatial Techniques to Determine Coastal Erosion and Accretion along the Ramanathapuram Shore, Tamil Nadu, India

The coastal region is one of the most sensitive areas on earth. This region has a diversified ecosystem. Erosion and accretion are common natural phenomena that can be seen in this region. In some circumstances, these changes become hazardous to the coastal ecosystem. Natural processes such as rainfall, flood, cyclone, longshore drift, and tectonic shifts can trigger irregular coastal changes. Similarly, anthropogenic factors such as urbanization, unscientific land usage, mining, etc., enhance coastal dynamics and make larger changes. Hence identification of such region has great importance. Geospatial technology has brought various advanced methods for shoreline change studies. It has decreased the huge effort for getting an accurate result for a larger area. Landsat satellite imageries with 30 m spatial resolution have been used for studying the changes in the shoreline of Ramanathapuram for the years 2000, 2005, 2010, 2015 and 2020. In Geographic Information System (GIS) software, the Digital Shoreline Analysis System (DSAS) tool is added for shoreline change analysis. DSAS will build the baseline transects. The rate of shoreline change was calculated using the MATLAB feature runtime function for ArcGIS. Based on the DSAS output, the region of high erosion, low erosion, stable, and low accretion, high accretion zones have been identified on the shore. The results reveal that 5.1% of the shoreline, around 9.3 km is under high erosion, 11.5% of the shoreline, which is around 20.8 km, is under low erosion, 71% of the shoreline, around 128 km, is a stable region, 6.7% of shorelines, around 12 km, have low accretion, and 5.6% of shorelines, around 10.1 km, have high accretion. The coastal villages, namely, Mayakulam, Keelakakrai, Periapattinam, Mandapam, West-Pamban, and East-Rameswaram, have a high erosion with a maximum rate of change between 2.29 to 5.11 m/y. The coastal villages Ervadi, Kalimankund, Sattankonvalsai, South-Pamban and South-Rameswaram have high accretion with a maximum rate of change between 2.34 to 5.24 m/y.