The feasibility of this topic depends a bit on the outcomes of a project proposal. In case it is funded, you will be able to make use of the outcomes of stakeholder meetings and we will be able to access many more data.
Shrimp production has a great importance for the livelihood of people in the coastal regions of Vietnam. Shrimp farming systems gradually shifted from extensive traditional systems towards highly intensive production. This, however, caused huge impacts on the environment and the ecological systems such as loss of mangroves, severe biodiversity loss, soil erosion, land subsidence, dispersion of antibiotics and the salinization of water and soil, which ultimately jeopardizes economic benefits.
Recently, due to the government’s policy on restoration of mangrove forest in coastal areas, co-culturing of shrimps and mangroves has been slowly emerged again in the Mekong Delta. Vietnam has set a target that 25% of its total exported revenue is based on shrimp farming. And this should be based on sustainable production methods on shrimp farms with more than 50% mangrove cover. This is a threshold and one of the sustainability criteria. The forestry people who do the assessments of the percentage of mangroves on shrimp farms, face challenges to make accurate estimates.
Your research can focus on evaluating and testing methods to assess the mangrove cover in (a part of) the Mekong delta. Depending on the outcome of a project proposal you may also be able to work on evaluation of the areas that seem most promising for sustainable shrimp farming. You have quite some freedom to define your research questions. But you could e.g. make a comparison between field based assessments, and estimates based on high resolution satellite images and UAV imagery.
The objective of the study is to test methods to map and quantify on-farm mangrove cover in shrimp farming areas in the Mekong Delta in Vietnam