Assessment of Landscape Ecological Connectivity for Sustainable Management of Digha–Shankarpur Coastal Tract, West Bengal, India

Landscape ecological study put forwards immense effectiveness for learning ecological connectivity in tropical coastal environments. Landscape ecology provides a well-developed theoretical and equipped structure for concentrating on sophisticated multi-scale questions concerning the influence of spatial outline on the ecological procedure. The present study deals with the climatic and altitudinal gradient which has resulted in a diversity of flora under the micro-geomorphological component of the delicate coastal setting. The native vegetation of coastal areas plays a significant role to stabilize the alluvium surface against wind erosion and provides habitat dissemination for wildlife. Accordingly, vegetation diversity has also been estimated through the randomly selected three transects (A, B and C) with 25 grids. Five types of vegetation communities are identified through the transact method (e.g., grasses, heaths, scrubs, small trees and large trees) and 25 types of micro-landscape units are identified in these transects of Ramnagar-I and Ramnagar-II coastal Administrative Blocks. The coastal vegetation is widely distributed and extended over the beach ridge surface; beach ridge fringed coastal plain; swale topography; inner coastal plain with abandoned creeks and older natural levee bank surfaces. The study divulges the relationships between vegetation and landform units of the coastal chenier plain surface and examined the morphological characteristics of the landscape instability. The interrelationship between habitats and morphological units demonstrates the interconnecting activities with each other in this particular sensitive ecosystem. The micro-morphological unit mainly beach ridge and natural levees has immense significance in connection with the floral species diversity as well as affluence of floral species.