Post-aquaculture land use regime succession in coastal Bangladesh

Abstract This paper takes a multi-perspective approach to investigate recent trends of land use and land cover change [LULCC] in the vicinity of Mongla, Bangladesh. The regional land use dynamics is the result of many overlapping domains experiencing profound changes in geomorphology, migration patterns, local economies, sea level rise, sustainability efforts, salinization, and altering livelihoods; all shape recent changes in the local deltascape. As in many other tropical river deltas, large-scale aquaculture has long been a dominant land use, now showing clear signs of onsetting decline. The research documented in this article focusses on investigating this specifically post-aquaculture land use change. To investigate the most recent LULCCs in the study area, a remote sensing approach was used to classify land use and land cover types, to map sand infills, and to create thematic layers between 1988 and 2023. The results show an onsetting decline of aquaculture and a strong increase of sealed surfaces of both industry and sprawl. These changes were interpreted as the emergence of a new land use regime, replacing aquaculture as the hitherto main driver of land use change. This non-deterministic regime change, driven by ecological, socio-economic, and political factors, promotes the idea of a succession of land use regimes and the rise of distinctly post-aquaculture land use regimes, emerging from compounding local drivers. This paper thus lays the groundwork for research into the implications and future sustainability of this new regime, which are crucial to anticipate and mitigate future risks stemming from natural and anthropogenic hazards.