Aquaculture in Brazil

摘要

Brazil has a total area of 8,514,876 km~2 (IBGE 2002), divided in 26 states, a Federal District, and 5,561 municipalities. The states are grouped in five regions: Northern, Northeastern. Midwestern, Southeastern and Southern (Figure 1). Each region has its own geographical, economic and social characteristics (Valenti 2000). Brazil is a privileged country in the aquaculture sense, due to the size and richness of the water resources, with a high point being the Amazon basin, accounting for 20 percentof all the freshwater in the world. There are also over five millions hectares of water impounded by dams constructed for hydroelectric power and drought control in the Northeastern region, and an extensive coastline that stretches for 8,000 km and is appropriate for marine aquaculture.