Geographic information systems, remote sensing and mapping for the development and management of marine aquaculture

FAO Fisheries Technical Paper. No. 458 Geographic information systems, remote sensing and mapping for the development and management of marine aquaculture

James McDaid Kapetsky  Consultant and José Aguilar-Manjarrez Fishery Resources Officer Aquaculture Management and Conservation Service FAO Fisheries and Aquaculture Department

FOOD AND AGRICULTURE ORGANIZATION OF THE UNITED NATIONS Rome, 2007 Table of Contents Download full ZIP file (8,534 KB)

Kapetsky, J.M.; Aguilar-Manjarrez, J.
Geographic information systems, remote sensing and mapping for the development and management of marine aquaculture.
FAO Fisheries Technical Paper. No. 458. Rome. FAO. 2007. 125p.

ABSTRACT

Geographic Information Systems (GIS), remote sensing and mapping have a role to play in all geographic and spatial aspects of the development and management of marine aquaculture. Satellite, airborne, ground and undersea sensors acquire much of the related data, especially data on temperature, current velocity, wave height, chlorophyll concentration and land and water use. GIS is used to manipulate and analyze spatial and attribute data from all sources. It is also used to produce reports in map, database and text format to facilitate decision-making.

The objective of this document is to illustrate the ways in which Geographic Information Systems, remote sensing and mapping can play a role in the development and management of marine aquaculture per se and in relation to competing and conflicting uses. The perspective is global. The approach is to employ example applications that have been aimed at resolving many of the important issues in marine aquaculture. The focus is on the ways tools have been employed for problem solving, not on the tools and technologies themselves. In this regard, we consider GISFish, the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) Internet gateway to GIS, remote sensing and mapping as applied to aquaculture and inland fisheries, as a complementary resource to this technical paper.

The underlying purpose is to stimulate the interest of individuals in the government, industry and educational sectors of marine aquaculture to make more effective use of these tools. A brief introduction to spatial tools and their use in the marine fisheries sector precedes the example applications. The most recent applications have been selected to be indicative of the state of the art, allowing readers to make their own assessments of the benefits and limitations of use of these tools in their own disciplines. Other applications have been selected in order to illustrate the evolution of the development of the tools.

The main emphasis is on GIS. Remote sensing is viewed as an essential tool for the capture of data subsequently to be incorporated into a GIS and for real time monitoring of environmental conditions for operational management of aquaculture facilities. Maps usually are one of the outputs of a GIS, but can be effective tools for spatial communication in their own right. Thus, examples of mapping for aquaculture are included.

The applications are organized issue-wise along the main streams of marine aquaculture: culture of fishes in cages, culture of shellfishes and culture of marine plants. Both the recent and historical applications are summarized in tables. Because data availability is one of the prime issues in the use of spatial tools in marine aquaculture, a case study is included that illustrates how freely downloadable data can be used to estimate marine aquaculture potential and a section is devoted to describing various kinds of data. Because the ultimate purpose of GIS is to aid decision-making, a section on decision support tools is included.

Finally, we summarize our findings and reach some conclusions on the state of the application of GIS, remote sensing and mapping for the development and management of marine aquaculture.

(http://www.fao.org)

GIS Training with QGIS - Exercise 4: Understanding Coordinate Reference Systems

1. Landsat imagery
a) From the directory Geodata\raster\landsat load one of the tiff images.
b) Check the MetaData tab in the Properties window for this raster to determine what is the
Spatial Reference System for this raster.
c) In Settings->Project Properties choose the CRS UTM33N EPSG:32633.
2. Vector layers
a) From the directory Geodata\vector\VMAP0, load all the layers.
b) From the directory Geodata\vector\naturalearthdata.com, load the only the
countries layer. Set it's symbology to no fill color (outlines only).
c) Do the vector layers appear? Why not? Right-click on one of the vectors and choose Zoom
to layer. What happens?
d) Open the Project Properties->General tab and check “Enable on the fly projection”
e) Do the vector layer overlay in the correct location now? Set transparency to 60% for both
the veg_trees and veg_cropland layers so that the Landsat image is visible beneath
them.
f) Move the mouse around the map and examine the coordinates that appear in the status bar.
3. ASTER Digital Elevation Model
a) From the Geodata\raster\ASTER directory load the ASTGDM_dem.tif digital
elevation model layer. Open the Properties window, Metadata tab and check the CRS for
this layer.
b) Switch to the Symbology tab, and select Pseudocolor for the colormap. Also move this
layer in the Table of Contents below the vector layers.
c) Now right-click on the layer and choose Zoom to layer extent. Does it appear
correctly? Why not?
d) Open the Project Properties and change the project CRS back to WGS84 (EPSG:4326).
Again right-click on the ASTGDM_dem layer and again select Zoom to layer extent.
What happens? Do the vector layers overlay correctly? Can both rasters, in different CRS,
appear together? Click the Zoom full button to examine the results. Examine the
coordinates in the status bar while moving the mouse around the map.
e) Again open the Project Properties windows and revert back to the UTM33N coordinate
reference system (EPSG:32633). Click the Zoom full button again to examine the results.
What displays? What does not?