Interactive Map Data Download
Scope and Impact
The Clark University Center for Geospatial Analytics (formerly Clark Labs), in partnership with the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation and in support of the Foundation’s Oceans and Seafood Markets Initiative, has mapped an inventory of pond aquaculture and coastal habitats in selected countries in the global tropics. The concern of the foundation is the rapid growth of shrimp aquaculture in brackish coastal ponds and its impact on mangroves and other coastal wetlands. Working with the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) and the Aquaculture Stewardship Council (ASC), the maps are used to establish whether shrimp farms meet sustainability guidelines set out by the ASC Shrimp Standard.
Landcover maps at 15 m resolution have been developed for 17 countries (Bangladesh, Brazil, Cambodia, China, Ecuador, El Salvador, Honduras, India, Indonesia, Malaysia, Mexico, Myanmar, Nicaragua, Philippines, Sri Lanka, Thailand and Vietnam) for the years 1999, 2014, 2018, 2020 and 2022. The categories are Mangroves, Other Coastal Wetlands, Pond Aquaculture, Open Water and Other). The ASC Shrimp Standard dictates that to be certified as sustainable, shrimp farms cannot be built in areas that were mangroves or other wetlands in 1999. The landcover maps for 2014 onwards are based on Landsat 8/9 OLI imagery, supplemented with Sentinel 1 and 2 data where necessary, and the landcover maps for 1999 data are based on Landsat 5 ETM+ imagery.
The study area of the coastal zone for mapping landcover is defined as a zone 10 km on either side of the coastline. Where necessary, the zone is extended to include land areas <= 5 m in elevation to a maximum extension of 60 km inland from the coast. The primary concern is to limit the inland extent to areas where it was likely that pond aquaculture would be dominated by brackish water and thereby have a stronger likelihood of being used for shrimp.
Along with landcover, for each country a change analysis is performed at the provincial or state level for selected years. All data are available for download through the links below. Updates to the data and web map will occur as the data becomes available. In addition to downloading the data you can explore the data using an interactive web map.