Monitoring Marine Aquaculture and Implications for Marine Spatial Planning—An Example from Shandong Province, China

Jun Wang,Zhihua Wang,Dazhuan Ge,Junmei Kang,Xiaomei Yang

doi:10.3390/rs14030732

Abstract

Offshore marine aquaculture can not only provide a large amount of high-quality food for humans, but also effectively relieve the pressure on land space. However, it is difficult for traditional statistical data to reflect changes in spatial dynamics in marine aquaculture. It is also difficult to effectively manage marine space development given the current status of spatial planning regarding land–sea integration. This study used multiphase satellite remote sensing images of Shandong Province together with an automatic extraction algorithm for aquaculture to obtain spatial distribution data of marine aquaculture (surface of seawater visible by remote sensing, types of rafts, and cage aquaculture). GIS spatial overlay analysis technology was used to superimpose marine functional zoning (2010–2020) data for comparative analysis to evaluate implementation effectiveness and existing problems in marine functional zoning. Results showed that the critical time regarding substantial change in marine aquaculture area was around 2010, concurrent with the implementation of the current round of marine functional areas. The aquaculture area in the agricultural and fishery planning area increased from 228.33 km2 in 2010 to 344.6 km2 in 2018, and the overall proportion of aquaculture increased from 65.53% to 70.48%. This indicated that marine function planning can exert a guiding influence. The port area and protection area were found to be other major areas for the expansion of marine aquaculture. We also used field investigations in uncovering the phenomenon of the combined marine functions of marine aquaculture and tourism. On this basis, the role of spatial information technology in marine spatial planning was analyzed, which revealed the importance of coordinated integration of land–sea space for effective control of marine development.

Highlights

The evaluation results showed that the accuracy of the marine aquaculture area extracted in this study was above 85% on average (Table 1), and above 90% in some years
They fully showed that the changes in marine aquaculture area extracted by this study were comparable, and the data accuracy was reliable; this laid the foundation for subsequent analysis
Using remote sensing and spatial information, we took the example of Shandong

Summary

Introduction

The area available to agriculture is often used for food production, and the marine land space has not been valued in the terms of food supply and national economic development. Marine aquaculture can be an important means of expanding environmentally friendly food production space [1]. As the population has increased and living standards improved, the demand for better and greater quantities of marine food has increased considerably, and the need to use and develop marine land space has increased significantly [2,3]. Studies have shown that global terrestrial agricultural production has continuously expanded to other ecological spaces in the past few decades, greatly changing the diversity of terrestrial ecosystems. The reductions in forest area, in particular, have

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