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A geospatial assessment of growth pattern of aquaculture in the Indian Sundarbans Biosphere Reserve

Environment, Development and Sustainability volume 24, pages 4203–4225 (2022)Cite this article

Abstract

Indian Sundarbans Biosphere Reserve (SBR) comprising over 100 estuarine islands and shared by human habitation and mangrove forests is considered to be a potential area for coastal aquaculture. This study, using LANDSAT imageries of the last two decades (1999–2019), delineated the spatiotemporal expansion of aquaculture at the expense of agricultural land, mudflats, and some mangroves. It also estimated a futuristic land transformation to aquaculture using the Cellular Automata-Markov Chain model. From the geospatial analysis, it is observed that (1) the aquacultures are mostly located around 22° 30′N, i.e., far away from the saline seafront, (2) total aquaculture area has increased to nearly 5.82% of the entire SBR in 2019 from 3.59% in 1999 and, (3) cyclone Aila and its surge inundation have influenced in their expansion. This growth of aquaculture took place with the loss of 3.71% (10,536.67 ha) agricultural land, 3.87% (730.40 ha) mudflat, and 0.28% (623.23 ha) mangrove from 1999 to 2009, and 6.02% (13,471.50 ha) agricultural land, 9.98% (1583.64 ha) mudflat, and 0.18% (382.35 ha) mangrove during 2009–2019. According to the predictive modeling, ~ 6% of the present agriculture area is prognosticated to be converted to aquaculture by the next decade under a business-as-usual scenario.

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Data availability

Source of the satellite data used in this study has been properly cited in the manuscript, and field data were collected by the authors.

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Acknowledgements

Authors are grateful to the Dept. of Biotechnology; Govt. of India for funding the project (Sanction Order No. BT/IN/TaSE/70/SH/2018-19) entitled “Opportunities and trade-offs between the SDGs for food, welfare and the environment in deltas” under TaSE (towards a sustainable earth).

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  1. School of Oceanographic Studies, Jadavpur University, 188 Raja S.C. Mallick Road, Kolkata, West Bengal, 700032, India

    Sandip Giri, Sourav Samanta, Partho Protim Mondal, Oindrila Basu, Samiran Khorat, Abhra Chanda & Sugata Hazra

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  1. Sandip Giri
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Contributions

All the authors contributed significantly during the present work. Material preparation, data collection and analysis were performed by Sandip Giri, Sourav Samanta, Partho Protim Mondal, Oindrila Basu and Samiran Khorat. The first draft was written by Sandip Giri and Abhra Chanda. Sugata Hazra critically reviewed the results and discussion before finalization of the manuscript. All the authors read and approved the final manuscript.

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Giri, S., Samanta, S., Mondal, P.P. et al. A geospatial assessment of growth pattern of aquaculture in the Indian Sundarbans Biosphere Reserve. Environ Dev Sustain 24, 4203–4225 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10668-021-01612-9

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