Land Use/Land Cover and Shoreline Changes along the Southern Kerala Coast, SW Coast of India

Shoreline represents the dynamic boundary that separates beaches from the continual impact of waves, winds, surge, and tides. This boundary evolves over timescales of hours (e.g., changing tides or wave conditions) to decades. The term land use refers to the human activity or economic function associated with a specific piece of land, while the term land cover refers to the type of feature present on the surface of the earth. An attempt is made to study the land use / land cover and shoreline changes along the coastal tract of Thiruvananthapuram district (length = 70 km) which accounts 12% of the total shoreline of Kerala, confined between N. Lat. 8 17' 33" and E. Long. 76 40' 18" to 770 5' 45". Survey of India top sheets of 1967 and 1989, digital data products of IRS-P6 of 2005 and IKONOS of 2005 are used for the study. The major land use/land cover categories identified in the decreasing order of abundance are coconut plantation (60%), followed by mixed plantation (25.5%), sandy area (12.37%), water bodies (8.27%) and paddy (2.9%). From the analysis of the shoreline, it has been found that the Kovalam-Poonthura sector (L= 5 km) is highly eroding (-130 m), followed by Vettur-Edava sector (L= 4.5 km) moderately eroding (-90 m) and Mudalapozhi-Mampalli sector (L= 5.15 km), moderately eroding (-50 m).High accretion (+140 m) is observed in the Karumkulam-Chowara sector (=6.19 km) followed by moderate accretion in the Pudukurichi-Mudalapozhi sector (3.0 km).