UNDERSTANDING THE DYNAMICS OF LAND USE CHANGES: ASSESSMENT OF SUSTAINABLE LAND MANAGEMENT PROJECT SITES IN BHUTAN

Land use (LU) assessment has been carried out at the sustainable land management (SLM) project sites in six Dzongkhags across Bhutan. This was done with an objective to provide baseline information of LU based on visual interpretation of LU classes and categories using Google Earth (GE) satellite image, coupled with extensive field verification. The results showed that the most dominant LU is dryland, constituting 63.33% of the total LU area, followed by irrigated wetland and horticulture combining to make 16.36% and 14.96% respectively. Interestingly, it was also revealed that 32.08% of the total LU area is abandoned dryland, which is 0.83% more than the cultivated dryland. Likewise, 4.61% of abandoned irrigated wetland is almost one third of total irrigated wetland area. In contrast, abandoned horticulture land category is less constituting only 1.02%. There is a very strong positive corrrelation between the prevalence of abandoned agriculture land to the total area of the particular LU type. The results showed that the huge area of potential agricultural land remained idle or uncultivated. This may be closely attributed to various factors, including the prevailing socio-economic factors and impacts of climate change.