4 - Central Institute of Brackishwater Aquaculture

National Workshop-cum-Training an Bioinfwmaticr and Intonnation Manapemant in Aquaculture
10.1.3 Watershed Management
A watershed is an area from which runoff resulting from precipitation, flows past
a single point into a large stream. The watershed approach for natural resource
management is an integrated way of looking at land and water resources and
their interaction in a given area. Estimation of soil erosion can be done
incorporating inputs derived either from conventional techniques or remote
sensing into modified universal soil loss equation in CIS environment. Watershed
prioritization is done for its management based on severity of degradation.
10.2 GIs Applications in Aquaculture
Planning activities to promote and monitor the growth of aquaculture in
individual countries (or larger regions) inherently have a spatial component
because of the differences among biophysical and socio-economic characteristics
from location to location. Biophysical characteristics may include criteria
pertinent to water quality (e.g. temperature, dissolved oxygen, alkalinity:
salinity, turbidity, and pollutant concentrations), water quantity (e.g. volume and
seasonal profiles of availability), soil type (e.g. slope, structural suitability, water
retention capacity and chemical nature) and climate (e.g. rainfall distribution, air
temperature, wind speed and relative humidity). Socio-economic characteristics
that may be considered in aquaculture development include administrative
regulations, competing resource uses, market conditions (e.g, demand for fishery
products and accessibility to markets), infra-structure support, and availability of
technical expertise. The spatial information needs for decision-makers who
evaluate such biophysical and socio-economic characteristics as part of
aquaculture planning efforts can be well served by geographical information
systems (Kapetsky and Travaglia, 1995).
The first applications of GIS in aquaculture date from the late 1980s (Kapetsky et
al, 1987). Since then, the use of GIs has been quite limited. Despite this, GIs
applications in aquaculture are surprisingly quite diverse, targeting a broad range
of species (fish, crustacean, and mollusc) as well as geographical scales, ranging
from local areas (Ross, et a/, 1993), to subnational regions (i.e., individual
states/provinces; Aguilar-Manjarrez & Ross, 1995), to national (Salam, 2003)
and continental (Aguilar-Manjarrez & Nath, 1998) expanses.
At the present time, the extent of GIs applications in aquaculture include site
selection for target species such as fish (Alarcon & Villanueva, 2001), oysters
(Chenon etal., 1992), mussels (Scott, Cansado, & Ross, 1998), clams (Arnold et
a/., 2000), shrimp (Alarcon & Villanueva, 2001), and seaweed (Brown et a/.,
1999); conflicts and trade-offs among alternate uses of natural resources
(Biradar & Abidi, 2000); and consideration of the potential for aquaculture from
the perspectives of technical assistance and alleviation of food security problems
(Meaden & Kapetsky, 1991; Kapetsky, 1994).A comprehensive listing of works
done on GIs application in Aquaculture till date is listed in Table 1. Fisheries and
aquatic science professionals are increasingly using geographic information
systems (GIS) as a resource management tool. Some case studies on
applications of GIS in fisheries and aquatic science research and management
are highlighted below.