Coastal areas have unique ecological conditions that make them home to many marine and estuarine species, and to mangroves forests that stabilize the coastline. Their protection is therefore necessary from an environmental perspective. West Bengal has a long coastline with millions of people living around it. Growing scale of anthropogenic activities in recent years has threatened the state’s fragile coastal areas.

This report presents analysis of the land use changes in three coastal districts of West Bengal—Purba Medinipur, North 24 Parganas and South 24 Parganas. This has been done using remote sensing, GIS technique and Google Earth timeseries satellite data analysis. A field visit to a few identified locations was also conducted. The key causes for change in coastal areas are new
construction, aquaculture and brick kiln operations.