Abstract:
Coastal zone of Sri Lanka is key to the sustainable development of the
country. However, the erosion of this coastal zone has been identified as a long
term problem. Therefore, coastal sediment dynamics around the country has to be
identified to develop an appropriate coastal zone management plan. Remote
sensing and GIS techniques can be used for quantitative and qualitative analyses of
coastal monitoring activities including understanding the coastal erosion and
accretion trends. In this study, past and recent Google Earth satellite images have
been used to analyze erosional and accretional trends in the coastal zone, all around
Sri Lanka. Using these results, near shore sediment transportation directions along
the coastline around the country were also predicted. Most of the south-western
coastline of Sri Lanka shows considerable erosion during stormy conditions under
south-western monsoon period, but mostly recovered during fair weather northeastern
monsoon conditions. Therefore, no any severe long term erosion conditions
prevail in the western, south-western and north-western coasts. However, isolated
locations in the north-eastern and eastern coastline shows considerable erosion.
Predicted nearshore sediment transportation directions proved that it is mainly
governed by wind and waves of southwest and northeast monsoons.
