Pesca continental

Geographic Information Systems in Fisheries Management and Planning Technical manual

Managing inland fisheries
30/05/2003

Many fishery biologists and policy makers involved in inland fisheries management and planning are unaware of GIS technology and its potential for fisheries planning and management. The FAO Inland Water Resources and Aquaculture Service (FIRI) has been active for the last 19 years in promoting the use of GIS and remote sensing in fisheries and aquaculture. Promotional activities have been carried out through training, projects, field missions, and oral presentations and publications. However, a manual to use along with GIS software for the fisheries biologists in the field explaining GIS in a way that is understandable to non-GIS users had not been produced until now. This manual was written to overcome this knowledge-gap, it is a “do-it-yourself” manual giving a short introduction to GIS software and its applications in fishery science.

The overall objective of this manual is to encourage fishery managers to use this tool (GIS) to foster the sustainable use of natural resources. The manual is aimed at fisheries biologists, aquatic resource managers and decision makers in developing countries who have no knowledge about GIS. The manual was written for use with ESRI’s ArcView 3.x and Spatial Analyst software.

There are five main sections in the manual: GIS concepts and functions and key tools provided by ArcView 3.x; · Geographic coordinate system and map projections; Raster data and analysis; Regression analysis and  Application case studies.

All sections are accompanied by exercises that have been designed to illustrate key applications of GIS in inland and marine fisheries management. Also, a custom-designed ArcView grid regression extension is included to show the integration of GIS with surplus production models. At the end of the training with this manual, the reader should be able to: apply learned principles and GIS to their own professional situation, perform analyses on their own data, be aware of the vast possibilities that GIS can provide and be able to communicate with GIS expert counterparts. The manual is useful for a broad range of fishery applications. However, this manual by no means covers all possibilities of GIS, it merely touches upon some of the most important features for fisheries management and planning.