Geographic Information Systems in Fisheries

Chapter 1: Introduction to Geographic Information Systems in Fisheries

Frank J. Rahel

doi: https://doi.org/10.47886/9781888569575.ch1

Many of the questions that fisheries biologists ask have a spatial component such as why fish abundance, growth, survival, or catch rates vary across aquatic systems; or how the location and juxtaposition of landscape features, such as ocean currents, groundwater upwelling, or human-created migration barriers influence fish populations. Geographic information systems (GIS) are a powerful tool for displaying and analyzing such spatial data. The use of GIS in fisheries management has been gaining momentum since the pioneering studies that combined GIS and remote sensing to identify areas suitable for aquaculture (Kapetsky et al. 1988; Meaden and Kapetsky 1991). Other early studies used GIS to address fisheries management issues in marine environments (Meaden and Chi 1996). Marine fisheries biologists continue to be at the forefront of applying GIS technology for addressing fisheries issues (Nishida et al. 2001; Valavanis 2002), although the number of applications in freshwater environments is increasing.

Our goal is to provide an overview of how GIS can be used to address fishery issues in a variety of aquatic habitats. Various chapters discuss how GIS can be used to address management and ecological questions involving fish and other aquatic organisms in rivers, lakes, reservoirs, estuaries, and the open ocean environment. An effort was made to provide an overview of the kinds of questions amenable to spatial analysis by using GIS, to indicate the special considerations for collecting and analyzing GIS data in various aquatic systems, to provide examples where GIS has been used to address fisheries issues, and to suggest future uses of GIS in each system.