Projected land cover changes in 2031 in Awangpone watershed, South Sulawesi, Indonesia

Abstract

One of the factors of watershed damage is that water catchment areas are decreasing due to land use changes caused by various human activities such as logging, forest encroachment, and development carried out in watersheds. Continuous changes without consideration in land use management will adversely affect all elements in a watershed, especially land closures that have a major impact on water availability. This study aims to project land cover changes by 2031 in the Awangpone river basin, Bone Regency, South Sulawesi. This study used a Cellular Automata-Artificial Neural Network (CA-ANN) simulation to make projections of land cover changes in 2031. The results of this study show a change in land cover from 2020 to 2031. Land closures that experienced an increase in area were in the residential class of 214.15 ha or 1.69% and the fishpond class of 58.38 ha or 0.46%. Meanwhile, dryland agricultural classes mixed with shrubs, shrubs, mangrove forests and rice fields have experienced a reduction in area. The changes that occurred both the reduction and the increase in the area of the land closure class in the Awangpone watershed were influenced by land conversion, where the addition of settlements caused a class reduction in other land closures.