Land Use

This chapter provides a brief overview of world land use and the associated environmental issues. It talks about the amount of land used and the negative impacts of aquaculture on terrestrial ecosystems. In addition, the relative productivity of land use for agriculture and aquaculture is compared. Deforestation is a major reason for land use changes and ecological perturbations but it is not a recent phenomenon. Mangrove areas are used by local communities as hunting, fishing, and gathering areas. Although aquaculture is not a major land use and does not appreciably influence the world's landscape, it can have significant effects on local land use patterns and cause ecological perturbations. Even if aquaculture production doubles or triples in the future, it still will have a comparatively small requirement in comparison to terrestrial animal agriculture for land to produce feed ingredients.