Overview |
Urban Sprawl |
Fringe Area Development |
Urban Agglomeration |
Emerging Technologies |
Relevant Links
Land use planning using GIS and linear programming
Reviewing all these aspects integration of GIS and mathematical models are very much necessary and is what we wish to do in our case study.
Table1.4: Job or profit return from different land-uses per ha
The study Area The Panchmahal district is situated in eastern Gujarat and lies between 220 17” and 230 27”, degree north latitude and 730 22” and 740 29”-degree easts, longitude. The entire northern and eastern portion is covered by hills and forests and interspersed plain cultivable land. The western part comprises plains rising gradually to the east and is drained by rivers and interspersed by sprinklings of low hills. The soil of the northern and eastern region of the district is shallow rocky and black in texture. The remaining land has fertile alluvial soil. The area is traversed by, seven rivers out of which, Mahi, is the biggest river. It flows from north- east to south- west direction. The area, also have few lakes of considerable size. Table 1.5: Investment required per unit hectare area for land-use
Out of this district a total sub area of 17799.928 hectares is selected. This region is dominated by single crop activity and is possessing more than seventy percent of forest reserves as shown in the figure1. Fig. 1: Land use classes for study area  In the figure 1 the symbols shown stand for different type of land-use like black color indicates water bodies, lateral inclined bars shaded area stands for forest reserves including shifting cultivation, squarely crossed area stands for single crop and horizontal lines are meant for grass land use. The tilted crossed area indicates waste land and densely checked are is for double crop region. The entire sub-area is divided in to polygon of different land use activity namely single crop, double crop, fallow land, deciduous forest, shifting cultivation, scrub land and water bodies consisting mainly of canals, lakes and ponds. The total land area consist of, 1679.749 hectares of land use area. The total water body area is about 1040.185 hectares. Table1.51: Decision Variables for land use transformations
The total area of each land class is calculated with the help of ARC GIS and they are listed in table 1.1. The database for determining the characteristics of specific land area is NRIS database. Table. 1.6: Input Matrix for solving the LP problem
Shifting cultivation land has been merged into the forest- land area for the problem under study and water bodies are not taken in to account for land use transformation or development scheme. Characteristics for each type of land is studied with the help of GIS, based on ground water, soil type and slope of the land. Table. 1.7: Input Matrix for solving the LP problem
With the help of these characteristic technical constraints are developed for different type of land use transformation. For example those lands with an average slope of 3-5%, ground water potential moderate to poor and soil depth around 7.5 to 45 cm, mildly alkaline soil and loamy sand to sandy clay loam soil texture are to be developed as grassland. Land with an average slope of 5-10% or greater, ground water potential poor to nil and soil texture sandy clay to coarse loam are preferred for forest development. Lands adopted for single cropping activity are having slope of 1-5%, ground water potential of moderate level and soil texture of sandy- clay to clay- loam. Double crop- lands are extremely rich in ground water potential and slope is in the range of 0-3% with soil texture sandy loam to sandy clay. These are intensively used land and are non alkaline in nature. Waste- land parcels are selected to be suitable for forest and grassland type of transformation. The land area suitable for transformation is calculated with the help of GIS. The table 1.2 shows the area values for all possible land transitions. The suitability area values are listed in table 1.3. The forest area under ecological constraint is calculated as 4714.254 hectares. Except waste- land some area of each type of land is kept untouched. The remaining area of grass land is 309.790 ha., 5976.720 ha of forest is untouched and 2052.507 ha is kept as single cropland. Total area of double crop- land is 7078.201 ha which is not considered for transition. Table 2.1: for optimal profit values
The grassland is suitable for conversion into forest, single crop- land and double cropland activity. Forests are dealt with special attention of ecological norms and under the constraint that 75% of forest has to be conserved only 25% of forest- land is allowed for conversion into double crop activity. Few hectares of single crop- land are allowed to go for double crop activity in the view of soil protection constraints. Thus for this exercise three sets of constraints (ecological, technical and financial) are proposed
Economic data for each land-use for computing the labor requirement per hectare and level of investments required for transformation are assumed empirically and presented in table 1.4. Table 2.2: for optimal job values
However it is recommended that detail survey should be carried out in real planning situations, creating new decision variables associated not only with different land use but also with different intensities of land use. |