Open AccessDigital database on shrimp farming in coastal watershed of Cuddalore District, Tamil Nadu
Author(s) -
P. Nila Rekha,
R. Gangadharan,
Shirley Dharshini,
Wilmart Clark,
G. Ramanathan,
D. Deboral Vimala,
A. Panigrahi,
C. Gopal
Publication year - 2017
Publication title -
indian journal of fisheries
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.216
H-Index - 12
ISSN - 0970-6011
DOI - 10.21077/ijf.2017.64.special-issue.76191-06
Subject(s) - shrimp , shrimp farming , watershed , livelihood , agriculture , geography , fishery , tamil , agricultural science , environmental resource management , environmental science , aquaculture , biology , fish <actinopterygii> , computer science , linguistics , philosophy , archaeology , machine learning
Brackishwater shrimp farming is essentially a coastal farming activity, making use of the marginal land and water resources resulting in economic benefits, providing livelihood option for the coastal poor and contributing to the national GDP. Getting successful crop by the farmers is indeed a great accomplishment since the disease threat always hovers around shrimp culture. This warrants the adoption of better management practices starting from the pond construction till the harvest of the shrimp with a collective action among the shrimp farmers in a cluster of farms with respect to stocking, adoption of biosecurity measures, disease management and discharge of treated water. For practically enforcing this through farmers’ associations, development of spatial database is a prerequisite and it is a relatively easy task in this age of information revolution. With this background, a digital information system has been built using ArcGIS 10.0 for the shrimp farms in the coastal watershed of Cuddalore District in TamilNadu primarily to aid farmers. The developed spatial database contains information about all the shrimp farms in Cuddalore District and it has been digitised from GeoEye with the cadastral map in the scale of 1:5000. A total of 4 km2 of shrimp farm area with 351 individual ponds spread over six clusters of farms has been digitised with their survey number. Field surveys were conducted to verify the satellite data. Details of the farms’were collected using a structured questionnaire and have been incorporated in thedatabase. Using this database both spatial and statistical information can be analysed and managed for querying, decision making and resource management. This digital information will also be handy for the policymakers for licensing the farm, monitoring growth and to enforce environmental guidelines.