Coastal erosion studies in Pondicherry using GIS and Remote Sensing

Geographic Information System (GIS) and Remote Sensing techniques have been used in numerous natural-resource applications. Coastal Erosion studies accompanied by GIS and Remote Sensing play an important role in these activities. Purpose of this work is to study the erosion and deposition near the breakwaters for a stretch of 12.2 Km in Pondicherry coast, India by comparing the Satellite Imageries (PAN + LISS - June 2001 and November 2002) with Hydrographic Chart and Survey of India (SOI) Toposheet. Image Classification was performed on the Satellite Imageries in order classify the features such as Sandy Coast, Shallow Sea, Medium depth sea, deep sea etc, Pattern Recognition, Spectral Classification, Textural Analysis and Change Detection are different forms of classification that were applied in this study to achieve the objectives mentioned above. With the aid of GIS and Remote Sensing techniques the change in the coastal geomorphology was clearly brought out. The new shoreline was captured from the imageries using overlay analysis techniques of GIS applications. Coastal erosion may have a direct impact on the virtual quality of the landscape. The erosional features and depositional features were identified and it provided a clue of equilibrium achievement between erosion and deposition. The result obtained from this work indicates a total erosion (8.0 Km) and deposition (4.2 Km) in the study area by comparing, Visual Interpretation and by applying GIS and Remote Sensing Techniques on SOI Toposheet, Hydrographic chart and Satellite Imageries is 309,059 Sq.m and 383,245 Sq.m.