Abstract
Land degradation is human-induced and natural process that adversely affects the land, to function effectively within a complex ecosystem. In recent years, the Kallar watershed has encountered various kinds of multifarious problems on both land and water in the urban and its environs. The upper part of the study area is facing water scarcity problems in the past few years, but which included no such rare occurrences in the past. The mid-portion in the vicinity of foothills are highly affected by soil erosion, whereas the lower portion of the area has faced problems like land degradation, such as an unusual increase of wastelands and conversion of good agriculture lands into construction plots. Apart from these, the study area is frequently affected by nature induced disasters like a landslide, forest fire, flooding, and drought. In this complex situation, the qualitative assessment of human-induced land degradation and its impact is essential. For this, Geospatialbased Multi-Criteria Evaluation (MCE) as a multidisciplinary approach has been adopted. To assess land degradation, six major criterions are preferred such as terrain (slope, elevation), environment (landuse/land cover, NDVI), soil erosion, and demography (population density). Considerable weights and ranks were assigned through an empirical MCE method. Based on the criteria, the land degradation was carefully delineated into five significant categories such as low (38.3%), moderately (23.6%), marginally (15.4%), highly (4.8%), and severely degraded (17.8%). The depletion of vegetation cover on hilly terrain and subsequent cultivation without proper protection measures constitute the possible reason for severe soil erosion and land degradation.
Highlights
Land degradation predominantly occurring in the arid, semi-arid, and dry sub-humid regions (UNCCD 1999; IPCC 2001) due to unstable climatic conditions and human activities which invariably causes severe ecological and socio-economic issues in the current scenario (Omar et al 2013)
The years, due to population explosion, growing industrialisation, The factors and sub-factors weightages were assigned based on agriculture expansion and rising living standards have increased the impact on land degradation
The detailed interpretation of individual study was conducted after conceding the above-given factors. factors results are given
Summary
Land degradation predominantly occurring in the arid, semi-arid, and dry sub-humid regions (UNCCD 1999; IPCC 2001) due to unstable climatic conditions and human activities which invariably causes severe ecological and socio-economic issues in the current scenario (Omar et al 2013). It critically involves two complex systems: the natural ecosystem and the human social system (Barrow 1994; Scott and Conacher 2008). The key concept of land degradation «refers to the deterioration or total loss of the productive capacity of the fertile soils for present and future use» (FAO 1980) Such potential losses are due to various forms of soil erosion by different agents, along with chemical and physical deterioration. It includes human factors and landuse management practices (Khaledian et al 2017; Camprubi et al 2015; Cerda et al 2016)
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