Natural disaster compels biota to adapt

India, with an extensive coastal line of 7,500 km and an Exclusive Economic Zone of 2.02 million sq km harbours rich diversity of coastal and marine biodiversity. The aquatic resources biodiverse coastal and marine habitats provide significant contributions to food and nutritional security and economic and social development of the country. Main evidences for climate change in coastal and marine habitats of India include sea level change, increased exposure to natural calamities, increase in ocean temperature, ocean acidification and impacts on fisheries and biodiversity. The major adaptive strategies evolved centers around providing awareness to the coastal population, training on alternate livelihoods in order to negate the risks and ill effects of climate change, and vulnerability assessment at micro levels. There is also a need for flood mapping, flood forecasting, development of hydrological framework and downscaled climate change projection modelling coupled with strengthening coastal protection methods with the participation of local communities. These adaptation methods would become effective only through mainstreaming biodiversity into climate change strategies and by integrating climate change risk in the state level disaster management policies.

Yojana, 2022

The coastal areas of India experience tropical climates and have diverse geological, geomorphologic, and ecological setups. The coastline has undergone physical changes throughout its geological past. The Indian coast is endowed with a wide range of biotic and abiotic resources which aprovide many demanding products that are essentially required for the welfare of human development. Important economic generation activities in the coastal areas include fishing, salt production, agriculture, aquaculture, animal husbandry, energy, tourism, and small-scale and major industries. Climate change parameters such as Sea Level Rise (SLR), increase in Sea Surface Temperature (SST), Shoreline Change (SLC), Hazards such as floods, cyclones, tsunamis, storm surges, erosion and drought are influencing the livelihoods of coastal communities and the welfare of human well being. This article “Indian coastal community and climate change” discusses the coastal climate change parameters and its impacts on the coastal communities.

EPRA international journal of climate and resource economic review, 2022

Mangroves are highly loaded with immense nutrient and always share it with adjoining coastal habitats. Interestingly this system supports number of endemic and endangered species throughout the tropical coast. India has more than 7500 km coastal line within this, it supports 4, 87,100 ha of mangroves and harbours 3985 species of flora and fauna. During late 80s India lost considerable areas of its mangrove cover due to several anthropogenic pressures [1]. The ongoing climate change turned out to be a potential threat to the remaining Indian mangroves and other coastal ecosystem. Ironically there is no sound study till date about the impacts of ongoing climate change on Indian mangroves [2]. The loss of mangroves will spread its impact on the adjoining system in a significant way. So, the mangrove loss will negatively influence the fishery resource of the tropical region and initiate regional and global socioeconomical crisis.

National Maritime Foundation, 2020

Mangroves are amongst the world's most fragile ecosystems. The impacts of global climate change such as rising sea-level, altering weather patterns, and acidifying oceans are putting mangrove forests at high risk. In addition, threats from human exploitation pose significant concern for their regeneration and restoration. This paper begins with an introduction to the unique features of mangroves and discusses their benefits for coastal communities in India. It thereafter goes onto look into their vulnerability to climate change as also to the impact of ostensible urban 'development' activities. The paper concludes by discussing the strategies and measures that must be taken at a policy level to conserve and protect this crucial ecosystem.

Predictions of changes in coastal habitat boundaries due to expected relative Sea Level Rise (SLR) allow advanced preparation for particular parts of the coastline to mitigate and offset anticipated losses and reduce risks to coastal growth and human safety. Thus, a better understanding of SLR and its impacts are essential to anticipate risks associated with SLR. The first move in such direction will be to project SLR at the local level at various time scales and scenarios formulated by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). This research aims to project SLR using IPCC Representative Concentration Pathway (RCP) scenarios and identify coastal natural resources and their dependent human communities along Chilika-Puri coast in Odisha, India, those in the risk of impacts and vulnerable to projected SLR. This study also aims at exploring suitable adaptation choices for informed decision making. IPCC criteria for assessing the SLR were followed in this research work. Future SLR projections were developed as per IPCC's RCP scenarios using the SimCLIM tool. The observed relative sea level trend is 1.94 ± 0.96 mm/yr. The projected SLR for the Chilika-Puri coast indicated 38.88 to 74.81 cm under high emission scenarios for the year 2100. To combat the potential impacts of SLR in the study area, a comprehensive adaptation strategy framework (both planned and anticipatory adaptation) is proposed, with relevance to the study zone, which will also have global implications.

RSC Advances

Urbanization and industrial development are increasing rapidly.

Coastal and marine ecosystems are among the most productive, yet threatened, ecosystems in the world; they include open ocean marine areas, offshore coastal areas, and theareas where freshwater and saltwater mix, and certain terrestrial ecosystems such as sand dunes. Over two third of the world's population live in coastal areas and dependent on the various ecosystem services that marine and coastal ecosystems provide. The coastline of Sri Lanka is approximately 1,340 km long and hosts a number of interrelated coastal ecosystems, including bays, beaches, dunes, estuaries and lagoons and tidal flats a diverse range of habitats such as mangroves, coral reefs. These coastal areas support a range of nationally important economic activities including tourism, fisheries and port developments. Yet the direct threat from climate change and increasing population, coupled with poorly planned coastal development, more intensive and industrialized resource extraction, and industrial pollution, shrimp farming, unregulated illegal sand mining indirectly affects to make the impacts worst. The rising atmospheric CO 2 and climate change are associated with concurrent shifts in temperature, circulation, stratification, nutrient input, oxygen content, and ocean acidification, with potentially wide-ranging biological effects in marine ecosystem and in coastal ecosystems raising the sea level, sea erosion, changes of rainfall, salinization are the major impacts caused by the climate change. But both of these consequences are interrelated. For instant the increase in risks due to climate change and sea-level rise as many other countries will experience, consequently coastal erosion, coral bleaching, increased risk of flooding and problems with freshwater supply inevitably occurs. From the Sri Lankan perspective, the rising of sea level will reduce the land mass belong to the country and will make an artificial coastal environment through sea erosion. The warm currents will distract the habitats and the livelihood of living and non-living resources in the offshore areas. For instances the coral reefs are more divergent sub ecosystem but the very slight difference in the temperature causes bleaching of the corals. This consequently endangers other species that are depending on this ecosystem. The acidification adversely affects to the growth of mangroves and its interrelated sub ecosystems will be distracted.

The atmospheric carbon dioxide was measured at 18 m above the ground with a Non-Dispersive Infra-Red (NDIR) gas analyzer fitted with a thermometer during 1984 – 2016 at Sagar Island in western part of Indian Sundarbans. The atmospheric carbon dioxide exhibited the lowest value of 384.98 ppm (during premonsoon 1984) to 401.22 ppm (during postmonsoon 2016). The highest peak of air temperature during premonsoon 2009 may be attributed to Aila (a super-cyclone that passed across the lower Gangetic delta during premonsoon 2009). We find overall increasing trends of these two variables, which strongly confirm the rapid rate of industrialization and urbanization in this mangrove dominated ecosystem. The change of land use pattern (due to unplanned expansion of shrimp culture farm at the cost of natural mangroves) is also a strong reason for the local scale rise of atmospheric carbon dioxide as well as air temperature. Massive plantation of mangroves may be an effective road map to get rid of the situation.

INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL FOR INNOVATIVE RESEARCH IN MULTIDISCIPLINARY FIELD , 2017

The mangrove dominated Indian Sundarbans located in the lower Gangetic delta region sustains about 34 true mangrove species and provide a multitude of important ecosystem services such as reservoir of various threatened species, breeding ground and nursery of commercially importance of finfish and shellfish, the provision of food, fuel and natural coast line protection from erosion due to tidal action etc. Apart from this, mangroves act as the store house of carbon and thus play a pivotal role in retarding the global warming phenomenon at local scale. Mangroves also maintain the water quality by absorbing nutrients and various pollutants. Such unique ecosystems are now threatened by climate change like increase of temperature, CO2, sea level rise etc. This paper discusses the impacts of these climate change induced threats on mangroves of the present geographical locale.