Preliminary Assessment of Land Quality Index of the Paddy Field Around Jember Regency

Abstract

Land conversion causes a decrease in the occupation of paddy fields areas. Furthermore, the existing paddy fields that are mismanaged cause land degradation also. This study assesses the land quality index (LQI) in Jember Regency, East Java, Indonesia. The novelty of this research is that it combines the assessment of soil and land parameters (terrain, topography, climate, irrigation infrastructure, erosion, and flooding). Input data for this study consist of land cover, soil type, and slope maps. The procedure includes (1) spatial analysis to create the unit soil map area, (2) preparing soil sampling, (3) field survey, (4) soil chemical analysis in the laboratories, (5) scoring of paddy field condition, (6) principal component analysis and (7) classification. The PCA results show that three variables ( i.e., slope, irrigation infrastructure, and flood hazard) strongly correlate to LQI. Then, four classes (very low, low, medium, and reasonable) of LQI describe the spatial variability of the paddy field. The results show that about 1.05% of the paddy field area is categorised in a shallow LQI class. Then a low-class LQI covers approximately 13.83%, a medium-class about 42.92%, and 42.2 % of the paddy field categorised as the good LQI. Management of irrigation infrastructure and planting perennials in upstream areas can be carried out to improve land quality.