Abstract
Agricultural land-use changes pose challenges for land managers in terms of ensuring the implementation of local land-use plans. This paper aims to build a land-use change model named MEKOLUC (Mekong Delta land-use change) for simulating land-use changes under the impacts of socioeconomic factors (profitability of land-use types, societal impacts on neighborhoods) and environmental factors (soil, salinity, persistence of salinity). The salinity diffusion map was generated using GAMA software and employed Markov cellular automata to depict the spread of salinity under the influence of dike and sluice gate system operations. The land-use decision-making process was based on multi-criteria selection of the main factors, which were land suitability, land convertibility, density of land use in the neighborhood and profitability of land-use patterns. The input data for the case study were historical land-use maps from 2005, 2010 and 2015 of Soc Trang, a coastal province in the Mekong Delta. The model was calibrated using a land-use map from 2010 (with kappa = 0.86) and was verified with land-use maps from 2015 and 2020 with deviations from 0 to 19%. The simulated results showed that shrimp–rice farming areas have been shrinking, even though these are recommended as sustainable farming systems. Inversely, intensive rice crops tended to change to rice–vegetable crops, vegetable crops or perennial fruit trees, which are projected to be well adapted to climate and salinity intrusion by 2030. This case study shows that the developed model is an essential tool for helping land managers and farmers build land-use plans.
Highlights
The Mekong Delta of Vietnam comprises 13 provinces, which are located in the lower basin of the Mekong River
Salinity Diffusion Agricultural activities in Soc Trang province are heavily influenced by local policies on the management of dikes and sluice gates, which prevent saline intrusion
In this study, a new land-use change model named MEKOLUC was proposed based on the coupling of salinity diffusion and land-use dynamics using cellular automata
Summary
The Mekong Delta of Vietnam comprises 13 provinces, which are located in the lower basin of the Mekong River. This is a major agricultural production area in Vietnam, combining many ecological zones: fresh, salty and brackish water. In this region, the production of rice, fruit and aquatic products takes place; the production in this area accounts for 55.7% of Vietnam’s total rice production and more than 69% of the country’s aquaculture production [1]. One of the main reasons for this is the lack of tools that help planners to predict land-use changes and test land-use solutions under the impact of different driving factors
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