Land use functions assessment for sustainable land Management: A case study in barind tract of Bangladesh

Abstract

Assessment of land use functions (LUFs) is increasingly recognized as a useful tool for evaluating sustainable land management. A study was designed to investigate the key indicators that act as main stimuli in changing agricultural land use and associated land use functions in Godagari under Barind Tract of Bangladesh. The capacity of seven land use types providing different LUFs was also evaluated. A participatory rural appraisal method was used to assess the LUFs, which includes four phases, i.e. literature review and site selection survey; LUFs specification; a ranking of priorities and weighting of LUFs; and visualization and discussion of the results. Primary information was collected from the different stakeholder’s viz. agricultural officers, university teachers, irrigation specialists, public representatives, forest personnel and researchers. Three farming systems i.e. rainfed, irrigated and irrigated with tree-based farming were selected to assess the nine land use functions under three dimensions of social, economical and environmental category. Among the farming systems, fruit tree–based system provided most of the social, economic and environmental LUFs compared to irrigated and rainfed farming systems. However, environmental problem/dimension was more critical than the social and economic problems/dimension and associated with depletion of soil fertility, installation of brick kiln, the uncertainty of rainfall, flood, drought, overuse of groundwater. Among land use types, agricultural land use showed a higher overall capacity per unit area on LUFs than that of other land use categories. Participatory assessment methods of LUFs helped the different stakeholders, particularly the regional officers as well as policymakers to understand the significant linkages between LUFs and land uses for sustainable land management.