KENDRAPARA: Urbanisation and growth of coastal cities have made a significant part of Odisha’s coastline potentially vulnerable to accelerated erosion hazard, as was revealed in the atlas of the Coastal Vulnerability Index (CVI) on Wednesday.
Replying to a question of Lok Sabha member from Kendrapara Anubhav Mohanty, Minister of State (Independent Charge) for Science and Technology and Earth Sciences Dr Jitendra Singh said that according to the study, around 37-km stretch falls under very high coastal vulnerability which was 7.51 per cent of the total 484 km coastline of Odisha.
“The study of 28 years of satellite data by National Center for Coastal Research (NCCR) Chennai, between 1990 and 2018 indicates that 33.6 per cent of Indian coast is eroding with varying rate of changes,” said Singh, adding that the ministry and its institutes are also providing technical solutions and advice to the State governments and union territories to deal with coastal erosion threats.
Indian National Centre for Ocean Information Services (INCOIS), an autonomous organisation of MoES, has published the atlas of CVI which maps the entire coastline of India at 1:100000 scale using data on sea level rise, coastal slope, shoreline change rate, coastal elevation, coastal geomorphology, tidal range, and significant wave height. Additionally, NCCR, an attached office of MoES, is monitoring the shoreline changes along the Indian coast using satellite images.