Aquaculture: Relevance, Distribution, Impacts and Spatial Assessments – A Review

Abstract

Aquaculture is the fastest-growing animal food production sector worldwide and is becoming the main source of aquatic animal food in human consumption. Depletion of wild fishery stocks, rising global populations, continuing demand for food fish, and international trade has driven aquaculture's tremendous expansion during the last decades - in terms of production volume and value. Farmed aquatic products are among the most widely traded commodities in the world food economy. Aquaculture has mainly been developed in valuable fertile coastal environments and caused large-scale land use changes, destruction and loss of coastal wetlands and pollution of waters and soils. This article presents an overview of the relevance, current status and distribution of aquaculture in global and regional scales and depicts its key environmental impacts. Quantitative assessment of the spatial extent, distribution, and dynamics of aquaculture is of utmost importance for a sustainable management of our planet's land and water resources ensuring human and environmental health. The article points to the potential of remote sensing to detect, map and monitor large-scale aquaculture areas and gives a complementary review of satellite remote sensing studies addressing the observation of aquaculture including site selection, site detection and monitoring of related impacts on the environment.