Lakshadweep, Rising Sea Levels: In a worrying study, scientists of IIT Kharagpur have estimated that a lot of of the islands about Lakshadweep could undergo coastal erosion. The study, which was carried out beneath the Department of Science and Technology, located that the sea levels about the western group of islands could rise amongst .4 mm and .9 mm annually. This could not only lead to coastal erosion of a lot of islands, but could also lead to the submergence of smaller sized islets, according to a report in IE. The group of islands has 36 coral and reef formation islands and it is situated in the Arabian Sea with a total location of merely 32 sq km.
The islands are low in elevation, with the minimum elevation getting significantly less than 1 metre above the imply sea level, and the maximum elevation ranging amongst 4 and 6 metres above the imply sea level.
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Of these 36 islands, only 10 have been inhabited and these are the ones that the researchers have studied. The report stated that the scientists looked at distinctive climate transform models to assess the variety of rise in sea levels, and projection of distinctive scenarios relating to greenhouse gases has been performed in the study, which was published in the Regional Studies in Marine Science journal. The findings show that all the islands would be impacted by this rise in sea levels, with some getting impacted more than the other individuals.
The report cited one of the lead authors of the study, IIT Kharagpur’s Prasad K Bhaskaran as saying that the islands have been currently getting impacted by the existing rise in sea levels. He added that a lot of nations have measures to defend coasts against erosion, and even even though India had some measures as well, they have been not sufficient, additional saying that by 2030, the group was expecting the islands to be impacted by coastal erosion in a big way, which would lead to complications for the inhabitants of the UT.
Bhaskaran added that there was an urgent will need to take coastal protection measures, even though saying that there could be two distinctive sorts of measures – soft measures like creation of mangroves would be more efficient in the team’s opinion, even though challenging measures like creation of sea walls would be substantially more high priced.
Major land loss has been predicted for the Chetlat and Amini islands, estimating that in Amini, land loss would take place in about 60% to 70% of the existing shoreline, and placing this figure for Chetlat at 70% to 80%. Apart from that, the rise of sea level could also influence Minicoy island and capital Kavaratti, with land-loss getting faced by an estimated 60% of the shoreline. Not only that but the only airport in Lakshadweep, situated on Agatti island’s southernmost tip, is also most likely to be broken due to this, the report added.