Aquaculture planning through Remote Sensing Image analysis and GIS tools in Northeast region, Bangladesh

Abstract

The study was conducted to detect the land use changes using Remote Sensing (RS) images and Geographical Information Systems (GIS) tools for aquaculture planning in Trishal Upazila, northeast region of Bangladesh. Landsat TM image of 1999 and Google image of 2012 were used in the study. Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) and Cluster image was prepared for discriminating the vegetation and for unsupervised image classification respectively. The unsupervised Landsat TM image of 1999 interpretation showed that total bare land and water body were 212 km 2 and 8 km 2 respectively. However, the bare land has decreased to 115 km 2 and the water body increased to 74 km 2 in Google image 2012. By contrast, the vegetation has increased 10% in NDVI Google image of 2012 than the Landsat TM image of 1999. Therefore, it is evident that 66 km 2 (28%) of water body has increased in 2012 Google image than the 1999 Landsat TM image, that means land use has changed tremendously in the study area over the fourteen years. It is also noted that vegetation has increased in the area due to water availability round the year in the region as fish ponds are everywhere. However, the conversion will only be permitted when follow the planning rules and integration of fish with agriculture is done.