Reservoirs in Nigeria are primarily constructed for public water supply and characterized by artisanal fishery. Most of the reservoirs are surrounded by a large expanse of land that could be assessed for fish culture. However, utilising these areas of land for successful and sustainable aquaculture operations require assessing different soil properties, environmental and climatological factors (soil, hydrology, topography, drainage and climate) that could guide in site selection. Hence, Landsat 8 OLI satellite datasets and Shuttle Radar Topography Mission were acquired from the Global Land Cover Facility to determine the land use type, coverage and the digital elevation model respectively within a 500m buffer. The soil profile was dug at three different locations to a depth of 1.5m and soil were collected at various horizons (0 – 37.5 cm, 38 – 75.5 cm, 76 – 112.5 cm and 113 – 150 cm) and analysed for physiochemical properties. Hydrological, soil, land use/land cover, vegetation, and elevation parameters were subjected to an analytical hierarchical process to develop a suitability map for aquaculture development in the study area according to standard methods.
Results indicated that 20.99 %, 47.74 %, 12.96 %, 6.03 % of the buffered area was water body, light vegetation, dense vegetation and built up areas respectively. The soil in the study areas was classified as Lixisols (which covered lesser land mass (11.63%) while Nitisols covered the higher land mass (88.37%). There were no significant differences in the water holding capacity of the soil collected from the three different locations. Soil taken from the upper slope had the highest water holding capacity of (40.54 ± 3.90%) while those taken from the middle slope had the lowest (34.24 ± 5.40%) water holding capacity.
Suitability model for the study area ((Figure 1) showed that land mass unsuitable for aquaculture development represents 6.07% (89.73 hectares) of the study area, 359.88 hectares (24.35%) were less suitable, and 950.76 hectares (64.33%) were suitable while 77.63 hectares (5.25%) were highly suitable. Despite the large sparse of the reservoir and it’s environed belonging to the suitable classes. Land unsuitable for aquaculture could be attributed to the presence of hills, rocks, undesirable soil parameters, high slopes and dense vegetation. Hence, individuals and corporate bodies could invest in the suitable areas for aquaculture development, which at the long run will increase the fish availability, create employment, improve livelihood and enhance the economic profile of the State.