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Background

Coastal ecosystem consists of estuaries and coastal waters and lands located at the lower end of drainage basins, where stream and river systems meet the sea and are mixed by tides. The coastal ecosystem includes saline, mixed saline and fresh water and fresh waters, as well as coastlines and the adjacent continental shelf lands. Coastal wetlands are commonly called lagoons, salt marshes or tidelands. Our coasts provide important fish and wildlife habitat, far beyond their limited geographic extent. Coastal ecosystems comprise more than 40 percent of the world population. Natural habitats face serious threats in coastal regions from human population growth and the development and disturbance that are often a consequence of growth. Population projections indicate that our coastlines will continue to receive the majority of the worlds  growth and development, promising to compound today's habitat losses.

The ecosystem of coastal regions has rich biodiversity due to the presence of the estuaries, mangroves and coral reefs. The sea level changes- global warming, changes in coastal region, geomorphology, mining activities and natural hazards like  floods, tsunami and earth quake  adds to the magnitude of the coastal problem. Keeping all these factors in mind, this conference has been conserved.

Coastal India  has a long coast line of about 7560 km with east and west coasts.  The monsoon dependent part of our country in most of the years depends on the ground water supply to  full fill the people and societies water requirements. The situation becomes more critical in monsoon failure periods. However, the rising demand for fresh ground water, mostly for drinking,  irrigation and industrial use lead to problems in coastal area force us for  over exploitation of these resources. But the ground waters are increasingly become saline or polluted due to this anthropogenic stresses. There is a need for sustainable exploitation to yield fresh water if the flow mechanisms are well established to protect, conserve and restore the coastal aquifer. So the  ground waters  of coastal aquifer is to be described, evaluated and explained primarily by application of principles of hydrogeochemistry to understand the migration of solutes using field data, isotopes and the numerical models. The salinity is not only due to seawater intrusion but also due to soil salainisation, palaeosalinity and secondary salt precipitation pollution etc. Human pressure on the coast zone from urbanization, industrialization, aquaculture and agricultural activities is responsible for this situation.

The potential for an aquifer to be contaminated from near-surface sources is indicated by the presence of young waters. Apparent ages and the percentage of young water in the samples provided additional information on aquifer susceptibility. For samples that are indicative of binary mixtures of young and old waters, methods like   3H can be used to estimate the apparent age of the young fraction, as a means of evaluating the validity of the other hydro geological study. Due to increasing anthropogenic stress the occurrence of selected chemical constituents in the water samples will be controlling the aquifer susceptibility, apparent ground-water ages and percentages of young water. Hence a comprehensive idea on various methods adopted to understand the behavior of costal ground water and their sustainability is required to establish the behavior of the coastal aquatic system by developing a proper methodologies.

Coastal areas can be exploited for the biological yield due to the natural or induced mixing with the  sea water, but also due to the presence of old marine water in the lagoons, lakes and aquifers and the generation of saline waters and brines in flat areas at an elevation close to the current sea level. The situation becomes more complex when there is a presence of backwaters, estuaries, saltpans, wetlands and wide tidal ranges. Tsunamis –cyclones which occur on a random basis and are independent of all other effects causing the elevated water levels to invade the continental regions. This natural phenomenon extends into the land along the distributaries channel of the rivers affecting the surface and subsurface waters. This conference will help to have proper management strategy and to decipher the sources responsible for the vulnerability.