Demographic Characteristics and Changing Land Use in the Coastal Zone of Kozhikode

Every part of the world is significantly altered by natural or being altered by anthropogenic forces. Nowadays human induced anthropogenic forces are much more active over the earth surface, especially due to population pressure and related developmental activities. Almost all the coastal nations in all the continents face threats from growing population. In this paper an attempt is made to depict the demographic characteristics of the coastal zone of Kozhikode and land use change scenarios in a geographic perspective. Study area witnessed rapid development in the recent past due to a set of factors. Population growth drives the urbanization process and that leads to related land use and landscape modification. The main objective of this paper is to detect and quantify the LU/LC in the coastal zone, Kozhikode district (figure1) from 1991to 2020 using satellite imagery and topographic map, in the light of growing population.