Abstract

Conchalish Henry*, Sakthivel Saravanan, Nainarpandian Chandrasekar

Coastal erosion is a natural phenomenon an endless redistribution process that continually changes beaches, dunes, and bluffs. Loss or displacement of land along the coastline occurs naturally and will continue to do so despite the best efforts to prevent it. This paper mainly focuses on the coastal erosion hazard assessment estimated along the coastal precinct between Kanyakumari and Thengapattanam, South-West Tamil Nadu, over a length of about 56 km and discusses mitigation. The assessment of beach erosion hazards is an estimation of a coastal area’s susceptibility to erosion based on a number of factors, such as historical coastal changes, geomorphology, current patterns, and human activities. In this study, only mean annual beach width change rate information is used for assessment. The coastal erosion hazard maps are prepared using GIS techniques to depict the extent of erosion at each profile in Kanyakumari district, south-west India. The five relative erosion hazard categories defined are: very high, high, moderate or medium, low, and very low. The very high category would identify beaches with the highest erosion rates. Results reveal that 37% of the study area is under threat of coastal erosion in the very high-risk category. The beach erosion hazard maps are useful for technical (e.g., planners, engineers) and non-technical (e.g., landowners, general public) users, and mitigation methods are also discussed. A C++ programme is developed to estimate the erosion hazard category of the location as the range of the erosion is known.