Abstract
<title>Abstract</title> <p>Aquaculture, the world’s fastest-growing animal food production sector, is rapidly reshaping climatically exposed coastal landscapes. Yet despite its growing importance for food security, livelihoods, and coastal economies, the relationship between aquaculture expansion and climate-related environmental stressors remains poorly understood due to the absence of integrated long-term datasets linking these land-use transitions with environmental change. AquaClim-Atlas India (1990–2025) addresses this gap through a spatially explicit longitudinal database spanning 31,088 coastal villages across India’s east coast, within the world’s second-largest aquaculture-producing nation. Using 30 m Landsat imagery, machine-learning classification, and spatial environmental modeling, the Atlas provides: (i) annual aquaculture land-use classifications; (ii) modeled coastal soil salinity; (iii) cumulative storm-surge exposure histories; and (iv) harmonized geophysical and socioeconomic covariates, including rainfall variability, elevation, population density, urbanization, and agricultural land cover. All layers are co-registered to consistent village administrative boundaries from 1990 to 2025, enabling longitudinal analysis of aquaculture transitions within dynamic coastal social–environmental systems. By linking aquaculture expansion with both slow-onset environmental degradation and extreme climatic shocks, AquaClim-Atlas enables empirical investigation of adaptation and its feedback dynamics in vulnerable coastal regions. The database provides an openly reproducible framework for studying climate-linked aquaculture transitions and offers a scalable template for coastal regions across Asia and Africa undergoing rapid aquaculture-driven change.</p>