Susceptibility of the Climate Resilient Landforms of the Coastal Tract of Odisha and West Bengal, India

Abstract

Wide sea beaches, beach ridges, barrier sand spits, sand dunes, and climate-sensitive tidal flats with mangrove forests on the coast of Odisha and West Bengal are the products of coastal process dynamics during the middle to late Holocene epoch under a stable sea level stage. These features are resilient to the global climate change phenomenon under natural conditions with the continuous supply of sediments and the spread of habitats that protect the coastal lowlands behind them against storms and inundations. Both the geomorphological and ecological systems of the depositional features were developed and optimized into matured stages before human intervention into the coastal system. These features were well developed along the storm-affected shoreline of the eastern coast of India with the supply of sediments into the coastal zones by river inputs, longshore current transport, cross-shore transport through storms, transgressive seas during the Holocene epoch, seasonal wind waves, and aeolian deposits. After assessing the climatic sensitivity stress, exposure index, adaptive capacities, and coastal vulnerabilities of the study area, the final result shows high susceptivity scores for the landforms that represent low resilient capacity; whereas, the coastal tracts of Purba Medinipur, and Sundarban represent low resilient capacity; and the coastal tract of Odisha reflects high to moderate resilient capacity. In the perspective of the global climate change phenomenon and human intervention into the coastal systems, the present study was conducted to find out the temporal changes of the coastal depositional features, to estimate the sensitivity of the features, and finally, to enquire about their susceptibility to the impact of cyclonic storms and the rapid rate of sea-level rise process currently occurring in the region of the tropical coast.