Application of GIS in land quality mapping for agricultural planning of Ha Giang Province

Abstract

In Vietnam, agriculture development is one of the most important tasks to secure food resources and reduce poverty. The north of Vietnam is the high mountain areas which are in the low development stage, agriculture is the main source of income of households. Ha Giang is a typical mountainous province, in which land management is very important in the development of economic. To get good land management, land evaluation is needed. The land quality evaluation is an important step in the land evaluation process. The paper presents the application of a geographical information system (GIS) and establish the land quality map in Ha Giang province in accordance with the Food & Agriculture Organization framework. The evaluation process starts from defining the land quality indicators which are in 4 categories: Climatic, Terrain, Soil, and Hydrological. The indicators are standardized and classify according to the FAO land quality evaluation system, all of data is processes in GIS environment, each indicator is a data layer in GIS database. The result is maps of indicators and the land quality map of Ha Giang province. There are 126 land quality units in which, more than half of them are of Feralsol. The result of the study can be used in various fields of management as agriculture, land use, infrastructure development,…