Since the 1980’s shrimp aquaculture has been one of Thailand’s largest industries
and has created cultivation ponds as a dominant feature on the landscape. While shrimp
farming has been economically successful, it has received criticism for being
environmentally harmful, most notably because of farms replacing mangrove forests.
Legislation regulating aquaculture development and technological responses to disease
outbreak have had a large influence on the land use of the Thai coast. The objective of this
research is to provide a systematic examination of how regulation and technology
development have influenced land use in this region. To accomplish this, Landsat derived
data were analyzed at the national and provincial scale to determine how Thai coastal land
use systems change over time. I found that interrelated changes in technology and
legislation have had complex influences on the landscape, which encourage both the
restriction and expansion of aquaculture growth depending on time and location.