4 Decades of Samut Songkhram
On a visit to Japan in 2014 I met 2 friends from Thailand, but I had never looked deeply into the provinces. This activity allowed me to do just that. Using NASA’s Landsat imagery I re
cognized that all of the world is not being monitored and recorded at all times because the Landsat imagery wasn’t available for most years between 1970-2000.
The most recent landsat image was from 2016. I’m not sure if the image quality just got better due to the passing of time but the jump in time from 1994 to 2016 showed a massive growth in vegetation along the coast that shows the true power of regulating mass industry in this case shrimp farming.
Shrimp is a popular ingredient in Thai food and is exported often. Even in New York City, items like shrimp crackers from Thailand can be found in every Asian supermarket. It made sense that the shrimp industry was overusing the coast in Samut Songkhram. Without knowledge of the damages one can cause, unregulated action can be very harmful to our environment. Just viewing these infrared images one can see the coastal vegetation restoration that has spread beyond just the coast.
The story map I created is of three satellite snapshot images from 1978, 1994, and 2016 in Samut Songkhram, Thailand using NASA's Multispectral Land Satellite. We were advised to state "Uncontrolled growth of shrimp farms in the 1980s resulted in the decimation of valuable mangrove ecosystems. In the early 1990s, laws and regulations were implemented which slowed the destruction of the remaining healthy vegetation along the coast. In recent years, some areas have had success with restoration efforts. These areas should be the focus of continued conservation education and monitoring practices."
As I attempted to put this information in a Esri Web Map App I was able to configure many details about how the map would be displayed and even was able to insert a logo by the title of the map. The only caveat, and not for general users, my user profile did not offer a Subscriber Content configuration tab so that I could share the premium content of Nasa's Multispectral Landsat layer so my web app does not show the full information of the web map.