Aquaculture Development Monitoring on Mangrove Forest in Mahakam Delta, East Kalimantan

Abstract

Abstract Aquaculture development is thriving to provide fish product demand. One-fifth of mangrove forest destruction in the coastal region is from aquaculture, where ninety percent occurred in South East Asia. The mangrove forest conversion for aquaculture development is also mirroring in Mahakam Delta which started in the early 1980s. In this paper, we examined the impact of aquaculture development in Mahakam Delta on the mangrove forest ecosystems using remote sensing. Thirty years of monitoring data were used using six Landsat images series (Landsat 5 and 8). The result found a massive development of aquaculture in the Mahakam Delta occurred in the late 1990s, in which 41% of mangrove forests converted into ponds. The unstable political situation in Indonesia and the decrease of rupiah exchange rate against the US dollar are the leading factors. Since the mid-2010s, aquaculture productivity has been declining and that many farmers decided to abandon their ponds. The condition made mangrove cover increase up to 4,000 hectares due to natural regeneration. Nevertheless, aquaculture ponds cover 54.8% of Mahakam Delta in 2020. To minimize the impact on the ecosystem, it needs to manage aquaculture sustainably with mangrove conservation.