Chapter 15 The continental shelf of western India

Abstract

The west coast of India, extending from Sir Creek in the north to Kanyakumari in the south, is a trailing passive margin that bears the imprint of generally shore-parallel and less common orthogonal structural elements. The geomorphology of the marginal part of western India, mostly controlled by the three principal structural trends of NNW–SSE Dharwar, NE–SW Aravalli orogenies and west–east Narmada graben, displays a straight coastline. The coastal ocean current operates from April to October and the net sediment transport is from north to south with the longshore current. The continental shelf width varies from 345 km off Daman in the north to 120 km off Goa and tapers to 60 km off Kochi in the south. The western continental shelf of India has an area of about 310 000 km2, and is divided into an inner shelf with modern clayey silt and silty clay sediments with high organic matter and low carbonate content, and an outer shelf having relict carbonate sediments, coarse sands with low organic matter and high carbonates. The mid-shelf is rather uneven topographically, and the outer shelf is commonly interrupted by shore-parallel ridges and reefs with a relief of 2–18 m. Phosphatic limestone micronodules occur in the outer shelf.

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“…In contrast, the east coast is an emergent coast (Swathi Lekshmi, 2020) with the Bay of Bengal receiving discharge from many east-flowing rivers, fostering larger estuaries and major deltas. The estuaries on the west coast lie mainly between Gujarat and Karnataka, while the extensive east coast estuarine system is in the stretch from West Bengal to Tamil Nadu (Faruque and Ramachandran, 2014a;Faruque et al, 2014b) (Figure 6). The intensity of the seasonal monsoons and the precipitation patterns show a great difference in the Indian subcontinent, and the latter along with other factors creates fluctuations in salinity by freshwater runoff and determines the hydrography of the aforementioned monsoonal estuaries.…”

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“…In contrast, the east coast is an emergent coast (Swathi Lekshmi, 2020) with the Bay of Bengal receiving discharge from many east-flowing rivers, fostering larger estuaries and major deltas. The estuaries on the west coast lie mainly between Gujarat and Karnataka, while the extensive east coast estuarine system is in the stretch from West Bengal to Tamil Nadu (Faruque and Ramachandran, 2014a;Faruque et al, 2014b) (Figure 6). The intensity of the seasonal monsoons and the precipitation patterns show a great difference in the Indian subcontinent, and the latter along with other factors creates fluctuations in salinity by freshwater runoff and determines the hydrography of the aforementioned monsoonal estuaries.…”