Coastal areas are commonly defined as the interface or transition areas between land and sea, including large inland lakes. Overall, about 50–70 % of the global population live within 100 km of the coastline covering only about 4 % of earth’s land, thereby drawing heavily on coastal and marine habitats for food, building sites, transportation, recreational areas, and waste disposal. The people of these zones depend mainly on low productive agriculture due to several constraints such as prolonged water logging and drainage congestion in predominantly low-lying areas with heavy soils during the wet season, preponderance of saline and acid sulphate soils, scarcity of good quality irrigation water, particularly in the dry season, seawater intrusion into adjoining lands, and water pollution due to eutrophication, and others affecting the aquatic habitats, etc. Carbon sequestration in coastal areas, such as, marshes, lagoons, etc. has significant influence on soil quality, and the carbon pool in soils as well as their impacts on the environment. Over and above these, the coastal areas are prone to disasters due to climate change leading to colossal loss of lives and properties in many areas. Forestry and mangrove dynamics, in particular, because of their continuing diminishing nature, are also subjects of interest affecting the ecology of coastal zones requiring appropriate attention. The international symposium held in this context on ‘ Transforming Coastal Zones for Sustainable Food and Income Security ’ in virtual mode in March, 2021 offered scope to present and discuss various thematic areas by eminent scientists from all over the world. The proceedings of selected papers presented reflect cross-sectoral views of the areas highlighting, wherever necessary, a fusion of technologies, with the ultimate target to suggest livelihood security and sustainable development for the sensitive coastal zones. The book intends to share the knowledge with researchers, academicians, and various other stakeholders to address the complex problems of coastal regions, production constraints, social, economic, technical and environmental issues to draw out strategies for resilient agricultural technologies and improving livelihood security in coastal agro-ecosystems.
Dr. T. D. Lama is a Principal Scientist (Soil Science) at ICAR-Central Soil Salinity Research Institute, Regional Research Station, Canning Town, West Bengal, India. He holds a Ph.D. in Agricultural Physics from Indian Agricultural Research Institute, New Delhi, India. His current research interests are in the area of soil and water management in coastal saline ecosystem, hyperspectral remote sensing of salinity stress in rice crop and mapping of coastal saline soils using remote sensing and GIS. Earlier he had worked as a member of an inter-disciplinary team for assessment and demonstration of technologies for sustainable management of natural resources and livelihood improvement of the farmers in the North-eastern hilly region of India. He has also worked on evaluation of resource conservation technologies and water management for improving resource use efficiency in vegetable crops. He was a member of the team for demonstration and refinement of technology of low cost rain water harvesting structures and in-situ residue management for soil moisture conservation under Farmers Participatory Action Research Programme in North East Hilly Region, funded by DST, Govt of India, for which the Ground Water Augmentation Award 2008 under the Institution category was bestowed by Ministry of Water Resources, Government of India to the implementing Institute. He has authored over 40 research papers, conference papers, book chapters, bulletins and technical articles.
Dr. D. Burman is the Head and Principal Scientist (Soil Science) at ICAR-Central Soil Salinity Research Institute, Regional Research Station, Canning Town. He received his Ph.D. in Agricultural Physics from IARI, New Delhi. Since 1995 he is engaged in research at various scientific positions at ICAR institutes (Indian Grassland & Fodder Research Institute & Central Soil Salinity Research Institute) on sustainable management of problem soils in semiarid and coastal regionfor augmenting agricultural production. Having 18 years of research experiences on soil and water management for agricultural development in the coastal salt affected region. He has developed many agricultural technologies especially for small and marginal farmers of the salt affected coastal region. During his research carrier he has handled many in house research projects and international projects funded by GEF, CGIAR under CPWF, BMGF, IRRI and ACIAR as Principal Investigator/ Co-Principal Investigator. He received Jawaharlal Nehru Award of ICAR and Young Scientist Award of Indian Science Congress Association. He was awarded Fellow of Indian Society of Coastal Agricultural Research. He has several publications in national and international journals.
Dr. Uttam Kumar Mandal is a Principal Scientist in Soil Physics at ICAR-Central Soil Salinity Research Institute, Regional Research Station, Canning Town. He holds a doctorate in Agricultural Physicsfrom IARI, New Delhi. He was awarded Post Doctoral Fellow at ARO Israel and was conferred Lal Bahadur Shastri Young Scientist Award in the field of Natural Resource Management. He received the Golden Jubilee Young Scientist Award from Indian Society of Soil Science. His research interests are soil water balance, sustainable land management in watershed, soil quality assessment, climate change, soil carbon sequestration. He is associated with ICAR network project NICRA (National Innovations in Climate Resilient Agriculture) where the team is looking after the spatio-temporal dynamics due to climate variability in Sundarbans region. He has several publications in national and international journals.
Dr. Sukanta Kumar Sarangi is a Principal Scientist in Agronomy at ICAR-Central Soil Salinity Research Institute, Regional Research Station, Canning Town. He holds a doctorate in Agronomy from Banaras Hindu University (BHU), Varanasi. He received Gold Medal in Bachelor’s degree in Agriculture and University Gold Medal during Master’s degree in Agronomy. He was awarded national scholarship during graduation studies, Junior and Senior Research Fellowships of ICAR for Masters and Ph. D studies. Worked at M S Swaminathan Research Foundation for conservation of rice biodiversity. He has about 20 years of experience on farming system research in hill and coastal ecologies of India. His research interests are improving productivity of rice-based farming system through efficient management of natural resources in salt-affected coastal areas. He has more than 80 research papers published in peer reviewed national and international journals and more than 25 book chapters/conference proceedings published by renowned publishers. Presently he is the Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of the Indian Society of Coastal Agricultural Research and editor of the Indian Journal of Agronomy.
Dr. H. S. Sen, Former Director,Central Research Institute for Jute & Allied Fibres (CRIJAF, a unit under Indian Council of Agricultural Research or ICAR under the Ministry of Agriculture, GOI), located at Barrackpore, West Bengal, has retired from regular service on superannuation from the institute, which was his last official posting, on 31 January, 2008. He did his MSc and PhD, both from the Division of Agricultural Physics, Indian Agricultural Research Institute, New Delhi. After completing his Ph.D. he joined the ICAR service in various capacities, which he continued with until joining the last posting as Director, CRIJAF, Barrackpore in July, 2002. Broadly his nature of experience can be divided into two parts, viz. (i) Research, (ii) Research Management and Administration. He was devoted to research in various capacities especially in the fields of ‘Water Management & Soil Salinity and Ecology related to Coastal Ecosystem’ during 1971 - 1976 and 1982 - 2002 at Central Soil Salinity Research Institute, Regional Station, Canning Town, W.B., which was in the heart of Sundarbans, and in the field of ‘Water Management and Ecology under Rice-oriented Cropping System’ at Central Rice Research Institute, Cuttack, Odisha during 1976 to 1982. He was devoted to Research Management and Administration at CRIJAF, during his last posting, having its mandate on ‘Productivity and Quality Improvement of Jute & Allied Fibres’ with emphasis on Ecology of the environment. He has devoted considerable attention for planning for future research strategies and livelihood securities in tidal dominated lower Ganges delta covering India and Bangladesh and authored a book on this topic published by Lap Lambert Publishing Academy in Germany, besides writing a few chapters on similar topics published by others. Dr. Sen has been the Guest Lecturer at post graduate level in the University of Calcutta for 25 years. He guided 5 students so far for PhD degree. He has so far published more than 160 research papers in variousforms. He has earned the national ‘Vasantrao Naik Award’ conferred by ICAR on his contribution to rainfed agriculture in coastal ecosystems in 1998. He is Fellow of two professional societies and Hony. Member of a number of other national and international societies & organizations. He is also the President of two societies of national & international repute. He has authored a book on Sundarbans which has been published by Springer International in 2019.
