Introduction
A large number of watershed ponds and reservoirs have been constructed mostly for household water supply and crop irrigation in mountainous areas of central and northern Vietnam. Occasionally, these ponds are also used for fish culture. Thai Nguyen district, situated approximately 100 km north of Hanoi, is a population center serving as a gateway to northern Vietnam. There are numerous small reservoirs and watershed ponds used for irrigation for tea plantations, rice fields and fruit orchards; some are also used for aquaculture. To most inhabitants in mountainous areas of northern Vietnam, supply of animal protein is relatively limited, with very small contributions from fish. Recently, the Vietnamese government has initiated aquaculture development in those areas as a means to increase protein availability. Therefore, the development of aquaculture in Thai Nguyen may also serve as a model for watersheds in other provinces.

In recent years, several surveys had been conducted in Thai Nguyen province to evaluate biological, physical, social and economic conditions for aquaculture development. However, most of the surveys lack systematic spatial data. Planning activities to promote aquaculture in Thai Nguyen province require spatial analysis because of geographical variation in biophysical features and socio-economic status (Kapetsky et al., 1987; Nath et al., 2000). This project proposes to develop a GIS database of watershed ponds, coupled with other physical, biological, and social attributes of northern Vietnam. Development of a GIS database is a first step in formally evaluating the effects of local geographic and social conditions on the production of fish in watershed ponds.

With an adequate database, Geographic Information Systems (GIS) can serve as a powerful analytic and decision-making tool for aquaculture development. Furthermore, it can also be used for management and to test consequences of development (Aguilar-Manjarrez and Ross, 1995). In this paper, we examine the potential of integrated social and environmental data with GIS and remote sensing as a tool for assessing watershed ponds for aquaculture development by integrating socio-economic and environment data with GIS, detect the land use change, and identify and estimate potential area for watershed pond development for aquaculture.

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