Land Suitability Evaluation in Major Agro-ecological Zones and its Application in Land Use Planning and Nature Protection

Summary

The suitability of a land depends on a combination ofphysicalfactors (mainly soil, climate and landform) and socio-economic options. The former may hereby be considered as rather stable components while the latter are highly variable in time and space.

Land suitability evaluation in terms of physical potential deals with a comparative classification of the land for a given range of utilization types, which may cover as well agricultural uses such as forestry, recreational or nature preservation options. The procedure hereby used is based on a matching exercise between the specific growth requirements and the environmental conditions. Those conditions can be derived from the soil and topographic maps and from climatic station data. However, because similar soils may have different potentials or because similar slope gradients may present different erosion hazards under variable climates their interpretation has to be made in a fully integrated soil-climatic context. The concept of agro- ecological zones meets this requirement as it combines the characteristics of a climatic zone with a soil and landform map unit.

When conceived as such the land suitability evaluation per agro-ecological zone and per land utilization type may provide a series of scenarios which can be used by decision makers for future land use implementation in its broadest context.