A study on shoreline changes of Mumbai coast using remote sensing and GIS

Coastal zone is a very complex, dynamic and delicate environment, which performs important functions such as shoreline stabilization, fish nature, recreation besides providing habitat for nearly all shellfish and finfish of nutritional and commercial value. Apart from these, coastal areas are also rich sources of food, energy and minerals and therefore a primary source of livelihood for a large part of the world's population. Shoreline is one of the most rapidly changing landforms of the coastal zone. Geomorphic processes such as erosion, deposition and sedimentation, periodic storms, flooding and sea level changes continuously modify the shoreline. The accurate demarcation of shoreline is therefore very important for planning conservation measures. Satellite remote sensing (RS) technique has proved its utility in all fields of earth science studies, including the study of coastal processes, because of the rapid, repetitive, synoptic and multispectral coverages of the satellites. RS data can be used to evaluate the coastal processes like littoral drift, erosion/ accretion and shoreline changes and to study water geomorphology landforms, sediment concentration, water quality etc. Geographic Information System (GIS) is designed to work with data referenced by spatial/geographical coordinates. The major advantage of GIS is that it allows identifying the spatial relationships between features and temporal changes within an area over time. Remote sensing satellites images have been effectively used for monitoring shoreline changes in different parts of India. In this paper an attempt has been made to study the shoreline changes in terms of accretion and erosion using RS and GIS for Mumbai coast.