Characterizing Water Dynamics of Coastal Aquaculture Ponds using Index based Time Series Analysis

Coastal aquaculture plays a decisive role in the global food security and emerged as a vital component in addressing the global challenge of the nutritional needs for the humans. The accurate monitoring of water presence in aquaculture ponds is very crucial for health, productivity, sustainable management and competent decision making in coastal aquaculture ponds. The objective of this study is to characterize the dynamics of water in the coastal aquaculture ponds using the Sentinel multispectral, microwave data and pixel-based time series analysis. The water frequency map prepared using NDWI was used to calculate the mean pixel value of aquaculture ponds to classify into different water classes, and pixel-based time series analysis were performed in GEE to get the inter-annual and intra-annual temporal pattern of water dynamics in aquaculture ponds. The mean pixel value results shows the shifting of aquaculture activities from Thalainayar to Muthupet region over the period of time (2017-2022) and pixel-based time series analysis shows the influence of monsoon in water frequency in aquaculture ponds. The water frequency pattern of the aquaculture ponds is an indicator of the productivity in the region and helps to identify the hotspots of high and low productivity.