Land Resource Inventory and Mapping: Tools and Techniques.

Abstract

Nature, extent, and reliability of spatial data on land resources become the imperative need of the present day for scientific utilization of land resources and sustainable management. In land resource inventory and mapping, the applications of remotely sensed data and geographic information system (GIS) are found to be not only timesaving but also economic in generation of base maps and conducting of soil survey. Further, high-resolution remote sensing and applications of GIS have made the task of land resource inventory and mapping cost effective and time efficient. Depending upon the objective, method and intensity of land resource surveys and scale, the type of satellite data to be selected to generate the base maps in order to show the details of survey information. A detailed soil survey provides sufficient information about various kinds of soils, including problematic or degraded soils, and is immensely useful for resource appraisal and development of alternative strategies for land use and site-specific agricultural development. As a case study, a detailed land resource survey was conducted in Piprakothi Block under Purba Champaran district of Bihar, and it shows that soils are very deep, well to somewhat poorly drained, and highly calcareous. Soils suffer from waterlogging, frequent flooding, drainage congestion, calcareousness, salinity, and multi-nutrient deficiency, affecting the crop yield. Soil-site suitability evaluation of sugarcane in the soils of the block indicates that 31.7% of the area is moderately suitable for the cultivation of sugarcane due to moderate limitation of soil fertility and 53.0% of the area is marginally suitable due to relatively low water availability and severe soil fertility limitations.