Along the Pacific coast of Honduras and Nicaragua, in the Gulf
of Fonseca, the landscape has changed over the past forty years.
An aquaculture industry has developed, producing a bountiful
harvest of shrimp within sight of coastal mangroves and
wetlands. The shrimp farms also produce a rich harvest of
arguments, with some people seeing an economic success story and
a reasonable use of coastal land, while others decry unnecessary
and destructive changes to wetlands. All three images above show
the eastern end of the Gulf of Fonseca as viewed by the Thematic
Mapper (TM) instrument on Landsat 5. The top image was acquired
on January 19, 1986; the middle on January 23, 1999; and the
bottom image on January 8, 2011. All three were captured during
the dry season. In these natural-color images, tidal (salt)
flats are shades of beige and gray, mangroves are dark green and
edged in brown, and inland agricultural lands are shades of
brown and light green. Shrimp ponds are mostly rectangular in
shape. When active and fi