4 - Central Institute of Brackishwater Aquaculture

APPLICATION OF REMOTE SENSING AND GIs IN
AQUACULTURE AND FISHERIES I N INDIA - AN
EXPERIENCE
1. Introduction
Sanjeev Kumar Sahu'
Natural resource management requires rapid and accurate methods for
interpreting data for development and management. For the management of any
natural resource, monitoring and surveying are two main factors. Inventory of
inland surface water resources used for fisheries is very important for fisheries
development. In the process of inventorying of water bodies, there are various
aspects, which should be considered at the same time such as the location, soil,
aquatic data, physico-chemical parameters, socioeconomic, livelihood, craft and
gears, species composition and ownership (like government, private), fisheries
activities and fish production. Surveying and monitoring of surface water
resource, associated land use / land cover, vegetation, water quality, primary
producers, sediment, TDS etc. could be performed by remote sensing technique.
Remote sensing is a multi disciplinary science of deriving information about an
object from measurement made at distance far from the object without coming
in contact with it. Remote sensing refers to the identification of earth features by
detecting the characteristics electromagnetic radiation that is reflected / emitted
by earth surface. Every object reflects / scatters a portion of the electromagnetic
radiation depending upon its physical properties in addition; objects also emit
electromagnetic radiation depending upon their temperature and emissivity.
Reflectance emittance Dattern at different wavelenaths for each oblect is
different; this enables identification and discrimination i f objects.
Presently, the commercial availability of remotely sensed satellite data of Indian
as well as foreign satellites is easily possible. These remotely sensed data have
high spatial, spectral, radiometric and temporal resolution, eases the monitoring
and surveying of the wetland resources. The spatial resolution of Indian satellite
varies from 2.5 m to 350 m, spectral resolution varies from 1 band to 8 bands
and temporal resolution varies from 2 days to 25 days.
India is an agrarian society where 7O0/0 of the population depends on agriculture,
animal husbandry and fisheries. Fishery is an important sector, its planning and
development largely depends on a sound and reliable data and information on
resource, production, marketing and distribution. Generating reliable information
basically needs identification, conceptualization, and classification and sound
scientific techniques for collection, compilation and analysis of data. Geographical
Information System emerged as an effident tool to access, organize, update and
analyse the information and to utilizeit in an optimal way.
A proper computer based information system is the need of day to organize such
complex data in order to draw reliable conclusions which may help in drawing
'Correspondence: Sanjeev Kumar Sahu Central Inland fisheries Research Institute,
Barrackpore 700 120, West Bengal; email:sksahu@dfri.ernet.ln